FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Today I was watching my Blue Rams swim about the tank and noticed something I found kinda weird. When swimming around, the female almost always has her dorsal fin erect, but the male will leave his down and not prop it up until he goes near the female, and even then he sometimes doesn't do it. This struck me as odd. It could be insignificant, but I thought it was worth noting.

Also, a thing that I noticed about the dorsal spikes. The male has 1 short and 1 long black spike, and 1 spike medium length with no black coloration(in that order). But the female has the first 2 long/medium length dorsal spikes and they are all black(and the same length). Is this a way to determine gender, or is the dorsal fin like a fingerprint where no other ram has the same exact spike arrangement?

Lastly, a question. My male ram *constantly* will fade and then brighten up. It seems like when he is around the female and swimming around the tank his black patches and stripe are bold. When he goes to chase a fish away he almost immediately loses color in his spot and stripe. Any idea why he might do that? The female is always colorful and will not fade unless she is startled by movement outside of the tank. I.E a cat or someone coming up to look at the tank (the tank IS away from pedestrian traffic in the room though)

Any way, this really isn't a serious question/problem. It's more of an observation. So what do you think of this?

Last edited by Tetra Fan at 19-Jan-2006 17:43

When swimming around, the female almost always has her dorsal fin erect, but the male will leave his down and not prop it up until he goes near the female, and even then he sometimes doesn't do it.

they are doing this to attract a mate. eating and reproducing are the top 2 priorities of, well, pretty much all animals and what you're seeing is how new world cichlids communicate with each other...in this instance trying to find a mate. I'd be willing to bet if you put a rival male, then one (the dominant one) would have his fins raised and colors very bold and bright most of the time to let the submissive male know to back off.

Is this a way to determine gender, or is the dorsal fin like a fingerprint where no other ram has the same exact spike arrangement?

I'm not very well read on dwarf SA's (never had much interest them honestly) but I've always been under the impression that this was a way to determine gender.

My male ram *constantly* will fade and then brighten up. It seems like when he is around the female and swimming around the tank his black patches and stripe are bold. When he goes to chase a fish away he almost immediately loses color in his spot and stripe.

cichlids use their coloring to communicate with each other. again, this has to do with finding a mate. when he sees a female swimming by, he's going to brighten up in hopes of impressing her so that they can spawn together. this also explains why your female is always bright...she's moving around with her colors bold to try to attract a male to spawn with. again, if 2 males were in the tank, one would have very bold and bright colors (the dominant one) and the other's colors would be very pale and drab.