I've got 6 little ones. 3 Louisiana and 3 central.
When can you tell whether you have male or female longears?
Started by
Guest_ksauers_*
, Oct 07 2013 04:31 PM
11 replies to this topic
#2
Guest_Skipjack_*
Guest_Skipjack_*
-
- Guests
Posted 07 October 2013 - 06:07 PM
Probably not going to happen for the novice until they start showing some sexual dimorphism. Member Centrarchid, may be able to give you some tips, but unless they are somewhat mature, I think it will be rather difficult.
#3
Guest_Gavinswildlife_*
Guest_Gavinswildlife_*
-
- Guests
Posted 07 October 2013 - 07:55 PM
If you cut them open its pretty easy
#4
Guest_Skipjack_*
Guest_Skipjack_*
-
- Guests
Posted 07 October 2013 - 08:06 PM
If you cut them open its pretty easy
I am sure that defeats his purpose.
#5
Guest_centrarchid_*
Guest_centrarchid_*
-
- Guests
Posted 08 October 2013 - 10:20 AM
Ksauers, First provide us with a picture of the fish in question. If too small, sexing even by using gonad morphology is difficult. Color / general appearance cannot always be trusted, especially with females. That is when you can play with behavior if you have more than one tank. You can get males that have not colored up to exhibit male only behaviors if they are sexually mature. It is kind of fun to do!
Edited by centrarchid, 08 October 2013 - 10:23 AM.
#6
Guest_Orangespotted_*
Guest_Orangespotted_*
-
- Guests
Posted 08 October 2013 - 03:31 PM
I'm interested in how you would go about with your proposition of testing for male behaviors, Centrarchid. I have a pair of 2.5 inch long ambiguous Orangespots that one of which falls somewhere between male and female on the color spectrum (thought they were both female at collection but now one has colored up some), and I'd like to determine its gender (fingers crossed for breeding pair...).
#7
Guest_centrarchid_*
Guest_centrarchid_*
-
- Guests
Posted 08 October 2013 - 04:13 PM
In your case place each orangespotted sunfish in its own aquarium. Get temperature into middle to upper 70's and blast with light for at least 16 hours / day. During "night" make certain they do not experience total darkness (I use night lights) which is something not to be overlooked. Condition for about two weeks using best feeds you can muster. Live foods like brine shrimp and mealworms squished can be used in addition to any prepared diet formulation. With O-spots mosquito larvae are hard to beat as quality forage. Then transfer putative female into tank with putative male and watch. O-spots in my experience are prone to be shy so step to back of room to observe or even behind something. We used to have wild caught coppernose bluegill from the Manatee River system that would not do their thing unless we were looking at them either through a window many feet away or through what we call the porno channel (webcams). Look for male dancing. After 10 minutes, pull "female" and put back in her tank. Repeat at 24 hour intervals. Male may not court at first but may dig after female is removed once he calms down. I have also been able to take water from a tank housing a ripe known female and placed it in with male causing him to color up and start to dog. This system works very well for bluegill, redspotted sunfish, bantam sunfish, warmouth, longears of multiple types and both types of dollar sunfishes. Absence makes the heart grow stronger but poor conditioning can screw everything up. This will force you to study communication between fish. It is neat to see what happens when both fish are males or both are females. Sometimes you can take water from a tank with another ripe female sunfish species, especial if she is spawning and use it to stimulate digging by young adult male. The young male must feel like he is king of the world for this to work. Somewhere I have a more detailed posting on this but cannot find it or anything else I posted here.
#8
Michael Wolfe
-
- Board of Directors
-
- North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage
Posted 08 October 2013 - 08:19 PM
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin
#9
Guest_Orangespotted_*
Guest_Orangespotted_*
-
- Guests
Posted 08 October 2013 - 10:23 PM
Thank you for the info Centrarchid, very detailed! I might send you a PM so I don't offshoot ksauers' thread. In the longears' case, what are the approximate sizes of the fish? And at what size does gonad morphology become a reasonably accurate way of answering the question?
#10
Guest_centrarchid_*
Guest_centrarchid_*
-
- Guests
Posted 09 October 2013 - 09:19 AM
Hey Centrarchid, is this the post you are looking for?
http://forum.nanfa.o...ge__hl__spin-up
There is a another dealing specifically with bantams. I am going to have to suck it up and make a video like Erica does so well for purpose of explaining how it is done. I need to do so for a course an online course anyway.
#11
Guest_gerald_*
Guest_gerald_*
-
- Guests
Posted 09 October 2013 - 12:35 PM
OK so using that method we can recognize a male by courting or territorial behavior, but what about a subordinate or juvenile male who's trying to avoid being harassed? What behavior will a true female show that a subordinate male will not show?
#12
Guest_centrarchid_*
Guest_centrarchid_*
-
- Guests
Posted 09 October 2013 - 02:33 PM
Gerald, you are a tough set of questions. Somewhere I state you can distinguish a male from a non-breeding male and a female but nonbreeding male you cannot distinguish from a female based on what I have been doing.
Having male isolated for about 2 weeks controls for the subordinate issue allowing him to start feeling cocky. With actual juvenile males, this technique will not work. With not quite 3" male bluegill it can work; maturity can be realized at much smaller sizes than typically realized, especially when larger adults are not present. Conditioning is everything for this to work.
Ripe females I can distinguish from sunfish that are not sexually ripe females by behavior but those behaviors I can key in on are seen only when spawning is imminent. With ripe females look for darkening of eyes which holds true across all centrachids I have observed actually spawn. Darkening is transient with color switching back and forth between light and dark within less than a minute. Look at some videos of spawning versus not spawning females for that. Ripe females also approach courting males with fins held in a very consistent manner where spines are down and raises are distended. Ripe females also tend to roll ventral area towards approaching male which to me is a form of aggression by the female. Color changes on body are species specific.
Problem that bothers me the most involves males that are not of the nest building phenotype (cuckolders such as female mimics and the little sneaker guys). The female mimics in bluegill acquired from the Fabius River system of northeastern Missouri would spawn just fine with a female and a nest building male but was very slow to switch over to nest building mode and courted / spun up like a guy not all that into girl bluegill. Seemed conflicted. The little sneaker dudes found their way to cull bucket so no useful observations coming from those.
Having male isolated for about 2 weeks controls for the subordinate issue allowing him to start feeling cocky. With actual juvenile males, this technique will not work. With not quite 3" male bluegill it can work; maturity can be realized at much smaller sizes than typically realized, especially when larger adults are not present. Conditioning is everything for this to work.
Ripe females I can distinguish from sunfish that are not sexually ripe females by behavior but those behaviors I can key in on are seen only when spawning is imminent. With ripe females look for darkening of eyes which holds true across all centrachids I have observed actually spawn. Darkening is transient with color switching back and forth between light and dark within less than a minute. Look at some videos of spawning versus not spawning females for that. Ripe females also approach courting males with fins held in a very consistent manner where spines are down and raises are distended. Ripe females also tend to roll ventral area towards approaching male which to me is a form of aggression by the female. Color changes on body are species specific.
Problem that bothers me the most involves males that are not of the nest building phenotype (cuckolders such as female mimics and the little sneaker guys). The female mimics in bluegill acquired from the Fabius River system of northeastern Missouri would spawn just fine with a female and a nest building male but was very slow to switch over to nest building mode and courted / spun up like a guy not all that into girl bluegill. Seemed conflicted. The little sneaker dudes found their way to cull bucket so no useful observations coming from those.
0 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users
NANFA Youtube Channel 
