Place your bets!

Certainly, they are still rather young, so I'd probably give them a couple of months before putting the plan into operation and in the mean time

allow the pinoys to have a few spawns and see how I do with the fry until the others are around normal breeding age, and then attempt the new pairing.

won't do any harm.

Your eyes did not deceive you Rob. That is a female. I'll get a print out going and try to show you not the 2 lines but the 1 continuous line. That's the easy part. Getting it back from paper to forum is the hard part. Using a netbook and a very old printer don't always match.

4th Attempt here goes, fingers crossed:-[img(500px,388px)][/img]
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BINGO.

If you look at the cropped picture. I have put a start and finish on it.
No way can you make two lines out of it.
Having said that looking at the original it appears there are two. That I would agree with. So you do not always go by what you first believe, you see as it it what you want to see, and that takes over. In this case you see what looks like a bump. bend call it what you want and your mind says, you are looking for a male so you see a male. I can understand where you are all coming from. But believe you me it takes time and patience to study the sexing of Angels. All I can say is look and look again. Try to see if you can see what you can't see. Now that's a bit of a tongue twister. Or that other way of saying it is, what the eyes see is not always what you are looking at.

What we are trying to do is seeing if it is just one continuous line. No humps or bumps. It does not matter if it is flat or curved. If there are any humps or bumps don’t worry it just makes it more awkward to tell. As long as we are looking between the two points, nose/fin.

No marks for the next artwork. It’s to try and explain what I mean.


As I said not my drawings are not very brilliant.

The 3rd line being a bit bumpy but it is still a continuous line between A & B.

One continuous line is:-
No turning the corner, so to speak.
It’s the same arc.
It’s the same angle.
I'm sure you know what I mean.

It might be the way I tried to explain things in the first place. But as I've said in the past I am not good at explaining things. And I apologise for that. Please feel free to keep on asking, I don't mind. I want to help every breeder and keeper of Angelfish I can.

Good luck every one.

PHIL

wildreddeer wrote:...what the eyes see is not always what you are looking at.

Very true and sometimes it works the other way. First you see what is there but the more you study it and consider other options and suggestions, you can convince yourself otherwise to a 'I'm not sure' position or the opposite to what you first thought.

I was watching the angels this evening and observed some interesting behaviour. Battleaxe has begun cleaning the side of the filter again and Big Smokey appeared to be hanging around. Although Ratbag kept chasing him off, he kept returning and even went as far as cleaning a spot nearby to Battleaxe before getting driven off again by her partner. Battleaxe made no attempt to chase him away but wouldn't tolerate Spots, Stripes or Little One coming anywhere near the filter... They're all pushed to the other side of the tank. Love triangle? It'd be fantastic for me, if less so for Ratbag! xD

Can I possibly ask for a second opinion on Spots? It wasn't the best picture before, and I'm suspicious. I'll get some more pictures tomorrow evening. Big Smokey and Spots are now cruising around together and chasing off all the others. Big Smokey keeps staring at the side of the filter, and Spots has just started picking at a nearby leaf. My gut is telling me it's a pair forming. This would be amazing news, Spots is getting very good looking lately and is from a different batch from Big Smokey. It's just about as good a pair as I could get. I've not heard of a false pair of two males forming before, but I'm certain it's not just wishful thinking on my part! :p

Clearest I could get with my phone. I'll dig out the camera tomorrow.

Hi,
From the original pictures you have given they are definitely two males.
The two pictures you have just posted is another matter.
I take it they are the same fish, so await better photos.
I would be interesting if you could get them together.
A couple from both sides would be helpful all round.
Phil

Will do! Would a video help?

I would have said yes but I am on a 7" net-book up here in Scotland and I print the pictures to enlarge them. Would be better at home I have a 32" monitor there. But you can try. It will do no harm

Ah I see. I'll get both. Takes me ages to get photos, I have to sit by the tank for ages first til they lose interest, cos to start with they all bunch together and stare at me, so all I get are head on shots. xD

all in the fun of fish keeping.

Right. Here's Spots.




And here's Big Smokey, because he's gorgeous and I take any opportunity to take photos of him... And I'm still hoping there's the faintest of chances you might decide he's a she after all. xD




Still trying for one of the two of them, but now they're too busy chasing the others and picking at leaves to sit still for couple shots. Video of what I'm sure is the pair bond behaviour on its way.

They're stuck together like glue, swimming side by side across the length of the tank and back, and then returning to the plants near the filter and picking at leaves, and chasing everyone else away. The problem is, as soon as I get near the tank, all the fish bunch together and I can only get a brief video of any of this behaviour before they see me move and come to investigate. -.-

Aaand literally just noticed.. On the second photo of Spots, does that look like a male papilla to you? Big Smokey on the first picture also looks to have a bulge as if about to drop one. Hmm.

I now have three large pictures of spots and three of big smokey.

Nope.

Still both males.

I have nether bothered about the tubes, so I can not tell you on that part.

Ahh. Oh well. I guess it's a bromance!

hmm .... I gotta say in the second photo of 'spots' that does look like the tip of a female breeding tube but .... the head shape is still male.
I'm going to watch this with interest now

Well, if anything is going to happen, it's going to happen in the next few days. Swimming together, getting aggressive, cleaning and dropping tubes all says this week to me.

If so, it's the worst possible time. I have a ton of soil and live plants arriving for a major rescape on Friday. D:

isn't that always the case though! They never chose to spawn when it suits us!

There's only one true way to know the sex of these two and so I say wait it out. You'll soon find out if this is a bromance or whether we need to re-think our sexing ways

I kinda hope I'm wrong, purely because it means this sexing method is still foolproof, and that would be a beautiful thing.

But...

They're now both cleaning the same leaf, and have been doing for a good 20 minutes. Spots occasionally breaks off to chase someone off, and then immediately returns.

...I'm getting highly suspicious.

Spot's is a girl. Breeding tube extended, belly looking very fat, full blown pre-spawning behaviour (right next to the pinoys, who are also doing their thing, silly things could have picked anywhere in the tank..).

If they look as if they're parenting well, this will be the pair I keep. Much calmer and less aggressive than the pinoys and my favourite two for a while now.

Big Smokey is terrible at plant cleaning, for the record. He pushes the leaf right to the floor and then looks very surprised that it moved. xD

I can't even. I'm so happy. ^.^

Just goes to show that even Phil's method isn't 100% fool proof! Congratulations.

fantastic news ... although not for Phil's sexing method. It just goes to show ...

Thanks guys. Could not be more pleased.

And sorry Phil. It would have been amazing if we had a foolproof method. On the plus side, Spots appears to be the exception and it's still a more accurate method than a lot of others I've seen! (Branching ventral fins mean a male springs to mind.. xD)

there are various methods plastered across the net but none have been as foolproofed as Phil's method ... until now.

I'll still use Phil's method but I'll now use it with a disclaimer lol