Breeding E. gloriosus

I'm trying to breed E. gloriosus with no luck...I lowered the temperature and the light duration for a few weeks and then brought it back up to stimulate summer conditions. The males did respond to this and now show the bright blue spots. I've been feeding them frozen brine shrimp and daphnia and even got them to eat ground up stick food. However I haven't seen any nest building or courting behaviors. I've isolated two females with one male with still no luck, and the males seem aggressive towards the females. The water I have them in is hard and has a pH of 8.1 which I cannot get lowered with commercial pH reducers (unless I add a lot which causes a drastic drop but would probably kill the fish). I'm not sure what else to try, if anyone who has bred these before has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

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You might have already seen it, but here's a link to a NANFA page that discusses how to breed E. Gloriosus:

Breeding E. Gloriosus

I'm also trying the same. When can sex be determined morphologically? I had a two sent to me several months ago that were about the size of a dime. One was rather bland, which I figured a female, and one was already brillantly flecked with color had a prominent black bar through its eye, and black tipped fins, I figured a male. Well the male hasn't grown a bit since I've gotten it and actually looks like he is about to die (eyes are bugged out, most of tail fin nipped away) so I'm affraid that pair is about to be no more. I had three other sent to me about a month ago which were slightly larger than a quarter, not quite half dollar sized. One is very bland, one is bland with some flecks of blue on the cheek, and the other has the black eye bar and more coloring in the fins, but nothing like my tiny sickly specimen. In the trio do I have a male and two females?