Sexing juvenile A. baenshi 'Inca 500'

[JimmyTheFish]

Hi All,

I recently bought a "pair" of sub-adult/juvenile Apistogramma baenshi and was wondering how one sexes them? They are about half grown. One has a slightly gold colouration with pronounced barring. The other one is more of a steely blue/grey colouration and the barring is not nearly as pronounced. From the research I have done the first one appears to be the female and the latter the male, but I'm not sure if it is just dominant colouration showing through between the fish as the gold coloured one does appear to be the dominant fish. Any help/info or pics of juvenile A. baenshi would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

James

 

[a.d.wood]

Hi James,

Depends on big they are, if more than 1" in size then you should be able to sex them fairly easily. For me, the key differentiator at this size will be the ventral fins, with the female these should have a black edge, a colour marking that should be absent from the males fins.

I appreciate the pictures below are of adults, but it still clearly shows the difference between the sexes with the ventral fins.

Female:

Male:

Male (with female behind):

Andrew

 

[lab]

With this species I found that you can also look at the tail where the male quite early on will have an orange/red margin.

Lars

 

[JimmyTheFish]

Thanks for the helpful info and advice. I really appreciate it

regards

James

 

[JimmyTheFish]

Here are some pics of my fish. I was finally able to get them to cooperate. Does this look like a pair? Based on the descriptions posted here I'm sure the second one is a female (she is also the dominant fish, and bullies the other one a little), I'm just not sure about the first one.

Male?

Pair? (Female in background)

Female

Cheers

James

 

[peterK]

On the second and third picture I can see unquestionable female. But on the first... I'm 99% sure it's very young male.