# Sexing German Blue Ram -tricky one



## Duque (Nov 19, 2012)

Hi everyone. 

This may be a challange. After watching my German Blue Ram grow HUGE over the past year, its female identifying traits started to show through, more and more. She had a line of blue dots permeating the very top edge of her black dot and she had long black lines on the leading edges of her pelvic fins.

Then something wierd happpened 2 days ago. ...the black lines on her pelvic fins disappeared. Later that night, they returned. I thought I was seeing things. The next day, I decided to take a photo with my phone camera (best pixel rate) and got what you see in the attached photo.

You can still see the light blue speckles across the top of the black spot, ....but all of the black leading edges on the pelvic fins are GONE again.


If anybody has any thoughts or knowledge of what we're seeing, I'd really appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks in advance.
Duque


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Colors change depending on mood, temp etc. This is in no way a sexing tool. Females always have a pink belly. This one doesn't so it is a male for sure (no tricky one)


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## Duque (Nov 19, 2012)

Wait. 

Yo-han, do female Rams will ALWAYS have pink bellies? I haven't noticed that with my other German Blue Rams or Electric Blue Rams. Sometimes they're pink and other times, the pink color fades.

Ahh! This is so confusing.


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

It fades a little when she is not in the mood so to speak, but it will always be visible. In electric blue rams this is barely visible. I usually sex electric blues by their dorsal fin. The first spine of the dorsal fin is longer than the other spines in males. In females, the third or forth spine is usually the longest. 
BTW, the hight of the body in your fish is also way too high for a female.


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## Shrimplett (Mar 21, 2013)

You have a nice male! The females have pink bellys and have blue specks in there black spot. The males have yellow bellys and a solid black spot with no blue specks in the black spot. And like YO-HAN said the first rays on the dorsal are longer than the rest. Also there front bottem fins (I forgot what there called) are really long in the males.


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## Duque (Nov 19, 2012)

WOW.

You guys are awesome. Really. If only all people were so nice and helpful.

Yo-Han, thank you for the information on the Electric Blue Rams, too. I had absolutely no idea how to sex them other than size and hopeful pink bellies.


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## Shrimplett (Mar 21, 2013)

Glad to help.


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