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OK I've looked everywhere, and cannot seem to find anything on one particular topic concerning bettas so I know someone here can explain it to me, right

So the question is:

How do you sex bettas? Other than when you buy them at the store the lid of the cup says male or female:%) How exactly would you sex them? I've thought about breeding (no I'm not ready for it, but I have a male and female who keep trying to go at each other through their tanks (they sit side by side for now) and he is always making the bubble nest that covers the top of his 2 gallon tank...Like I said I'm not going to breed today, but say I did in the future, how would I sex the little guys and gals once they are large enough to be sexed? How would you sex an adult?

Stupid right? Now just don't tell me to go and ask the fishies, "So are you a boy or girl betta?" and No, I'm not gonna follow them to see which bathroom they enter

hml

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

well, there r a few ways the most common way to tell is fin length, but they now have long fin femals and short fin males i tell, by looking at the underside of them a female will have an egg tube, and someitmes be a bit less aggressive, a male will be more aggressive, and flair alot more, if you breed them, wait to see aggression, take the aggressor out, and examine it, and put it in a 10 gallon if you think its female, or jar it if you think male, when u go to add the second fish to the 10 gallon, look for what their reaction r and make a finalish decision, or, u can jar them all, and wait to see what u think, by fin length, or egg tube

after seening around thousands of bettas, it is kinda second nature to me. other than looking for the obivous, i look at the face. the male will have a bolder face structure, were females are more rounded. also when looking at the betta, the males will have a an extentsion under their gills. females lack that feature.

update: i don't like the fin to much, b/c now more than ever it is getting harder to tell.

watch out for stripes. most people will say that only females will get verticle and hor. stripes, but this isn't always true. i haven't heard any controverse over the method i mentioned.

i don't like basing it over aggression, b/c every betta is different and have different attrubiutes. some males will be aggressive, where as some males may be very mild. same with females.

the obiouves method is looking for the white dot under the betta, but i have had males that have had a white looking dot underneithe them, so i don't like this method either.



Last edited by bettachris at 06-Jul-2005 20:41

duh, forgot about the head shape oh well

and i dont realy agree with the eztention of the gills though because..most, or all my girls have this, my pearl female's is as long as a males and she pushes hers out like a male too (but i know its a girl because i bred her)hmm, it seems easy at first, but then there are those silly bettas with gender issues and now that i think about it, i think themost relyable way is by the head, and face, although im sure there are exceptions to that too some wheres

Heidi
I did a Google search there is plenty there here are two of the better (no pun) ones i found for you.

Sexing Bettas
Sexing can be quite easy. All you need to know are the basics. First off ets look at the fins are the long and beautiful or are the short. If the fins are long then you have got yourself a boy but if you got short fins(unless you have short finned bettas) then you got yourself a girl.
But Are you not sure or do you have a Short Finned Betta then there is still hope lets move on to the next way. Aggresion. Is one Betta being mean or really aggreive to the other babies(fry). This usually means you got yourself a boy. But just like people there can be some tuff chicks out there. So this way is not always reliable.
A female will always have a white dot on her belly this is where eggs are extracted from. Also male bettas USUALLY have longer fins not always but usaully. But this is after they are full grown not when they are still fry. If you are still unsure you might want to put it into it's own tank and watch it grow and see what happens.


Sexing:
There are several ways to attempt to sex Bettas, some fraught with peril. I will try and explain. Males generally have longer and fuller fins, but some females are bred now with long fins. Generally the male's body is less wide, and more elongated but this is not easy to identify if the fish is young. Males are also generally much more colourful than females but that's not a guarantee either. Males generally flare at each other, but again, I have also had females aggressive enough to flare. So how do you know yours are male and not female? The easiest way is the female possesses an ovipositor tube or egg spot. This is a tiny white spot the size of a grain of salt located on the belly between the anal fins and ventral fins. To make this more confusing it is possible for immature males to have this same spot, although it is not found in mature males, so the chances of finding one on a pet shop Betta are remote.

Keith

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I just wrote a page on sexing bettas with a bunch of diff ways to tell: http://www.ontariobetta.envy.nu/gender.htm