Keeping only female rams?

bazil323

bazil323

AC Members
May 1, 2008
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Wisconsin
Ok, I think I've asked this before, but I can't remember for sure and it's been awhile. I currently have one juvie gold German ram of unknown sex. I've been reading up on sexing this morning, and I will try to sex it tonight. My gut says male because it's pretty adventurous and is always coming right up to the front of the tank when I feed, etc., and eats vigorously. It's currently about 1.25-1.5" so might be a little young to tell yet.

I've been wishing to get another ram because I really wanted a blue (friend talked me into a gold to match my honey gouramis), but I don't want breeding in my tank because of bad experiences with kribs breeding in my community tank (lots of bullying & death).

Anyway, if it turns out my current one is female, could I get another female or would they fight? I know that males will fight. Btw, it's a 75g standard.
 
Have fun, be more darring you have the room, GBRs are great, there are new EBRs out now.
 
I recommend keeping rams only in multiples of sexed pairs. Even two females can be bad in my expereince. Males will fight males and females will fight females, both to the point of death. Females only go after males if they have paired with another male in the tank and males won't go after females unless they are trying to eat the eggs he fertilized.
 
Well, it might be a moot point. I checked mine pretty carefully last night, and I'm thinking it's a male. The dorsal fin has a couple of longer spines at the front, has no pink at all on the belly or anything, and the ventrals seem to be long enough to cover the front part of the anal fins.

I couldn't remember for sure what the criteria for the ventral fins length was, but I remembered something about comparing them to the anal fins. Am I right in thinking that female's ventrals aren't long enough (usually) to meet the anal fins, but male's ventrals will cover part of them?

Also, it seems like females are generally considered more shy than males. Mine has no problems exploring the whole tank and does not shy away from the glass when I walk up to the tank. It generally ignores the rest of the fish in the tank with no signs of aggression at all, though.

I think I need confirmation on this, but I'm also not sure if it's big enough to be sexed yet. It's about 1.5" right now, maybe a little less. It is a gold German, so it might be a little harder to sex from what I've read so far. I'll try to take some good pics tonight, but I never seem to get any good ones.
 
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