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Sexing mud minnows w/o the use of fin color?


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#1 Guest_Nightwing_*

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Posted 13 December 2007 - 10:02 PM

Other then the iridescent blue/green on a males fins..is there any way to sex them? I have one male(that I can tell) and I fear I may need to replace him down the road. In the last couple of weeks, he's developed a pronouced bulge in the rear part of his intestine area, and I suspect he's got something fairly seriously wrong(not a uniform bloat like dropsy..just a more localized swelling..like he has eaten well..but it does not go down after a day or so). He's also not eating much. Anyway...it is what it is, but if he passes I'd like to have another with the brilliant blue tinted fins he has..and may try to find some in the shallows of a local lake during warm periods when the ice goes soft. In the past, "in the net" they all look black..so, any way to figure this out in the field w/o the benefit of a spawning color?

#2 Guest_daveneely_*

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Posted 13 December 2007 - 11:03 PM

Other then the iridescent blue/green on a males fins..is there any way to sex them?


Cut 'em open. This time of year females should have developing ova, males will have very homogenous and white speckley testis.

#3 Guest_Nightwing_*

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Posted 14 December 2007 - 04:50 AM

Correct me if I'm mistaken...but "cut em' open" may have a somewhat negative effect on their long term survival rate as residents in my aquarium? :huh:

#4 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

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Posted 14 December 2007 - 06:59 PM

Of course Dave meant that you should sew them back up - that goes without saying. They should do OK if you're careful. Experienced fishkeepers do this all the time, after anesthetising the fish with alka-seltzer.

#5 Guest_daveneely_*

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Posted 14 December 2007 - 07:26 PM

Sew? Who sews anymore? That's what super glue is for...

#6 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

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Posted 14 December 2007 - 11:11 PM

You're right of course. I have actually done this!

#7 Guest_bullhead_*

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Posted 14 December 2007 - 11:22 PM

I actually have used super glue to hold together deep cuts. Cheaper than going to the ER for stiches.

#8 Guest_butch_*

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Posted 15 December 2007 - 05:30 PM

Just ignore them, Nightwing. When the spring comes, just look for slimmer bodied mudminnow instead of fatter mudminnows (they are gravid females) or you can just collect several mudminnows and see if you can sexing them and its not messy especially you don't have to cut them open and sewing it closed. I'm not fan of cut live fishes open to see what they are, unless its open friday seafood dinner.

#9 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

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Posted 15 December 2007 - 07:25 PM

It's not as crazy as it sounds. There was this one guy I heard about who cut open a spider's abdomen just to see what was inside. Then when he found a worm he spent 10 minutes unraveling it just to see how long it was!

Now, while I personally do not know anybody that strange, Dave's suggestion would make perfect sense to such an individual. Hell, it makes perfect sense to ME!

Remind me to tell you sometime about my tapeworm collection and my dog "Fatty". Also my other dog "Lumpy".

#10 Guest_fishlvr_*

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Posted 15 December 2007 - 07:27 PM

Remind me to tell you sometime about my tapeworm collection and my dog "Fatty". Also my other dog "Lumpy".


I would like to know. Maybe you should post the story in the Native Inverts forum.

#11 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

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Posted 15 December 2007 - 07:35 PM

I think I've posted about my collection before...maybe a diligent search will turn it up.

#12 Guest_Nightwing_*

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Posted 15 December 2007 - 07:39 PM

So..in all seriousness, can I assume there is no way to do this?
The current "reigning" male is actually doing better...it may just have been he'd eaten a snail or something, but he's not looking as "lumpy" as earlier.

#13 Guest_choupique_*

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Posted 15 December 2007 - 09:41 PM

Both central and eastern mudminnow males will have larger anal and pelvic fins by comparison than females. Centrals should show some blue tint in the anal fin even at a small size, and is the best way to do it. Put them in a small clear container or bag and shine with a small flashlight to get the best look at the anal fin.

They should be getting into spawning condition really soon here, so telling them apart will be even easier.

I included a picture of each, the males anal fin is really large here, but you can still see the females well enough to understand what you are looking at when the males are not as colored up and sporting such overgrown finnage at spawning time.

Attached Images

  • limifemale01.jpg
  • limimale03.jpg


#14 Guest_Nightwing_*

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Posted 16 December 2007 - 02:06 AM

Thanks, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for!
It seems that of the 6 I have, I somehow managed only one male. He's colored similar to what you have here, although his dorsal and caudal fins in addition to his anal fin, have an almost brilliant blue-green sheen in streaks between the rays. He also is much more colorful in the body.
Hopefully...I can add a couple more males this spring(right now...any place with them is locked under a foot of ice!). The bulge I earlier noted was not evident today and he was feeding as normal..so I'm hoping it was simply a blockage that's passed.

#15 Guest_choupique_*

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Posted 19 December 2007 - 12:43 AM

Glad that helped.

Actually these are some older pictures. My old camera was terrible at picking up anything in the blue range, and no matter how much I messed with the pic on software, I just could not get the colors to come out the way they look in life.

The new camera is much much better, especially since I don't have to wait what seemed like five minutes for it to react to pushing the button. It seems the flashes bleach out all the blues, and some photo editing software can bring it back to some extent, but often to the detriment of the red hues.

What I am getting at, is this male in the picture was one of the nicest ones I had seen in a good while. It had those electric blue between all the rays of the fins except the pectorals, which were bright orange. Those bars on the side were bright green, gold, pink and silver, with some blues mixing in the posterior bars.

The cool thing in that picture you can see the ... I don't know what to call them. The scales on the caudle penduncle of breeding male mudminnows get rough, mmmmm, pearl scale might be a term that works. You can sort males and females in the dark by this at spawning time. If you look closely I think you can see a few bumps on the top part of the body there.

#16 Guest_Nightwing_*

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Posted 20 December 2007 - 01:05 AM

Yep, that's a good description of my male. I realized today that I DO have two males, however. The second must be subordinate, as it's not colored up nearly as much. Oddly however....it still gives as good as it gets when they get nippy.



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