Male Or Female?

[Guest yaedr]

How do you know if your fish is male or female?

[Fishmerised 1]

The easiest way to tell is when a male reaches maturity he will develope "breeding stars". These are small white dots on his gill covers and on the edge of his front fins.

Males reach maturity anything from 1-3 years.

[Jeana727 952]

You are supposed to be able to get a good idea by looking at the anal area..... males have a protruding area (an outie) & females more like an innie!! Search thru this site there are some better explainations & pictures!! Good luck on that, so far I am pretty bad at it! One weekend I even had my hubby looking too! What a wild weekend THAT WAS!! Both of us looking at goldie butts!!

[daryl 11]

Actually, I think it is the opposite. Females have a bit of an "outie" and males have a bit of an "innie".

Males can also develop breeding stars much earlier. My ranchu developed them at 8 months. He was already 6 inches, though....

A trick that can make it easier to spot the breeding stars on a young, developing male is to shine a flashlight at an angle along his front fins. The breeding stars tend to reflect a yellowish or pearlish shine - they glisten and reflect. It makes it easy to see even the most rudimentary of stars.

Of course, if the fish drops eggs, then you have a female.

[ellnbea 0]

I notice that my female fantail has a much larger gap between each anal fin and her vent is located between the anal fin, where as my male(A moor) has no gap between his double anal fin and vent is located below the anal fins. He has never showed breeding stars on his cheeks or head but has a whitish spot at the base of each petoral fin.

[daryl 11]

Some fish are extremely hard to see any stars on their cheeks. ORandas and other wened fish are particularly difficult. I depend on the pectoral fins.

I have met some people that can tell the sex of a juvenile fish by the distance between fins, etc. Some of the are pretty accurate - about 80%+ accurate. Not bad for a juvenile fish!

[Jon 0]

Here i an artical on sexing of a goldfish

http://hometown.aol.com/kmam1/MyPond/Sex.html

[ellnbea 0]

oh and it is my female that does all the chasing! I have only seen the moor (male) chase once when they actually spawned, she is always chasing him I think she wants to have more babies but he doesnt seem interested

[koko 14,335]

http://www.kokosgoldfish.com/breeding.html

[Jeana727 952]

See I muck that up all the time! No wonder I can't figure mine out!!! But I am gonna try that flashlight thing!! I have NEVER heard that one! Good Job, Daryl!!