FishProfiles.com Message Forums

I want to buy a pair of bolivian rams as the title suggests. I want to know how easy it might to be able to sex them at the young age that they will invariably be when i walk into the shop. They're going into a 3' and I only want to buy one pair. as a general rule buying several and waiting for them to pair is not really advisable around here because then i have no where to go with the left-overs. Generally LFS don't take fish from private people even for free.

Also if you wouldn't mind making a few suggestions for dither fish? ATM I'm leaning towards either Cardinal tetra (if I can ever find some) or Black neons, but I want to know what you would suggest or have experience with.

When they're that young, I think the only real way to tell them apart is that the males will have extended spikes at the front of their dorsal fin that the female doesn't have. If they are by chance sexually mature, the females may have a red area on their bellies. However, since rams have become really popular recently, the demand has caused fish breeders to breed the traits that tell them apart right out of the rams sold to pet stores. I have a friend who thought she had a male and female pair, but it turned out that she did indeed have two males.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

I think that Illustrae's advice is mainly correct when it comes to blue rams, not Bolivian rams. Bolivians are sometimes harder to sex than blue rams, but not necessarily always.

You can look here for some pictures of my rams from several months ago. The first three pictures are of the male, notice the ray extensions on the caudal fin, and the fourth is of both male and female, the female on the left doesn't have those ray extensions. Apart from a slight difference in body shape which is something you might not always notice, this is the only sure way of telling them apart, and even that doesn't always work as some fish have been so inbred that the males don't even have the fin extension anymore...

My tip is to go to the shop when they have a few of them in there, stand in front of the tank for some time and observe the fish. Any male and female who have coupled already will swim together, they might actually claim a corner for themselves and chase other fish away from where they are or might flirt with each other. If you're lucky you might even see a pair preparing to spawn (cleaning the bottom, etc).

I have never had tetras, so I don't know how they are as dither fish. By what I've heard they're not good dither fish if you want to breed your Bolivians as they're baby snatchers and are too fast for the parents to cope with. In my experience guppies are quite good dither fish. They're slow swimmers and a not very bright so they're perfect as the parents can terrorise them successfuly and feel very much on top of things.

Anyway, Bolivians are quite robust are and should be capable of taking care of most small fish. The only problem is that they're not as nasty as other dwarf cichlids (apistos, for instance, or even blue rams) but mine are doing fine so far in a community tank.

Hope this helps.