Have you watched your angelfish clean a slate and wondered if one of them laid eggs? Yeah, that’s happened to most of us. It has happened at least once.
You’ve waited months, bought two beautiful adult, hoping they’ll breed… and then nothing. They might be fighting over territory. They ignores each other. Usually it’s not because the fish aren’t compatible. Chances are you guessed wrong regarding gender early on. Or you didn’t bother to check, assuming the secret was hidden somewhere in color patterns.
How to Tell Male from Female Angelfish
Nope. Color is a worthless metric when it comes to identifying male vs female angelfish. And as the chart above demonstrates, color patterns (veil, koi, marble) occur equally frequent in both sexes. Don’t go by what you think something looks like. You’d of had better luck guessing someone’s occupation based off shoe size.
Reaching maturity is where the real challenge begins, but far too many newbies speed past this stage because they don’t understand why they need to wait. In terms of physical differences that enable you to sex them, juveniles are almost indistinguishable. Trying to guess at age six months is roughly like tossing a coin. There aren’t enough difference in shape between male and female bodies. And the key secondary sexual characteristics haven’t begun to show themselves.
So it comes down to conditioning. About two weeks prior to sexing, you should feed your fish a diet heavy on brine shrimp or bloodworms; something rich in protein. Not only will they plump up some, but it causes body changes that make them easier to identify: the female’s belly expands; the breeding tube starts to form. Until this happens, you’re observing fish that is concealing their identities from you.
If you keep them long enough, visual clues stand out when they are ready and conditioned. One clue is the breeding tube, or papilla. This tube start to poke out just behind their pelvic fins as the fish prepare for spawning. What happens is the male turns into a pointy little rod, tapering off at the very end, while the female produces a wider device with a flat side. Makes perfect sense from a functional standpoint. He requires a nice tight nozzle to fertilize eggs; she wants something wide open to get ’em in there in bulk.
So when those tubes start popping up, that’s a pretty good indicator that the fish are ready to roll, much better then measuring their fins or looking for forehead bumps. That nuchal bump on his forehead is another decent second clue but can be hard to see depending on individual. And forget the differences in fin shapes. That’s about as accurate as a coin flip, too… which explains why they fade away completely out of season.
Behavioral aspects is as important as physical characteristics in a good match-up. In a good match-up, you will notice that roles are clearly split during courtship behavior. The female tends to circle around, return to the spawning area, while the male usually does the chasing/flaring. Often, there’s a bit of lip-locking between two; at least it appears so but really, it’s a bonding exercise where each is testing the other.
Then comes egg laying time. It’s clear who’s the female and who’s not. The fish who deposits the stringy row of amber eggs? Female. And who’s the dude right behind her fertilizing those eggs? That would be the male. Next, they both fan the egg clutches as they guard the eggs together. They will guard the eggs cooperatively for about sixty hours until larvae hatch.
Once those fry are free swimming, you’ll need to change tactics when it comes to raising them. They’re sustained at first by their yolk sac, but you’ll want to add some liquid fry food or infusoria soon after. This is also where water quality realy matters. You’ll want to do regular (but gentle) water changes every day to remove any possible ammonia. To get through this step, though, all you have to do is be patient and let nature take its course.
That means waiting until there are natural indicators before trying to determine gender; if you can hold out, the rest will fall into place. Observe rather than assume. Let physical maturity and behavior of your fish guide you to avoid common mistakes made by novice breeders. Patience isn’t just a virtue; it’s the most important tool in your tool box.
