How to Sex Banggai Cardinals and more

[albertthiel]

Whereas this is not the only method to sex Banggai Cardinals, this is certainly one that gives accurate results but is not that easy to implement due to what you need to look at which may pose some challenges as you will see as you read the article'. Link to the article is further down.

Personally the way I have sexed them is by using another method altogether : place 5 or 6 of them in an aquarium and watch what goes on. In a relatively short period of time you will see that two of them will start "to hang out together" and kind of "push" the other ones to another area of the tank and not let those get close to them.

Those two are forming a pair and those are the ones you need to remove and place in another aquarium, or leave them in the one they are in and remove the other ones. Now if you have a few left (depending on how many you put in to begin with) you may find that yet another pair will develop. I find this method to be far easier to put into effect as no high macro cameras are needed and you do not have to catch the fish nearly on its side to photograph the underside and try to determine how many "vents" you see ... as explained in the article.

Using my method, the more Banggai's you put in the tank the better, as it will probably allow you to form several pairs. Just make sure you have enough aquariums ready to house them in.

Also if you only want to form one pair, and you purchased say 6 Banggai's from your pet store (juveniles or better a little more grown out) and you do not intend to keep more than two, make arrangements with the Pet Store so you can return the Banggai's that you will not be keeping .. either for full credit or for whatever arrangement you can make with your LFS.

The last and of course not the least of methods is to buy a pair that is already formed ... strangely enough there are not many around of those but once in a while you may find Pet Stores and Resellers online who offer them for sale (at a premium price of course). So to avoid the high cost you may want to use the method I described.

Link to the Article on Advanced Aquarist Magazine :

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/how-to-determine-the-sex-of-banggai-cardinalfish

You can also refer to this series of posts for more information :

http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?high=&m=72814&mpage=1#72814


Albert

[az]

that is a good idea we will have to try that with next batch of bangaiis, I was told females would have pointy face compared to that of males which is more round.

[albertthiel]

that is a good idea we will have to try that with next batch of bangaiis, I was told females would have pointy face compared to that of males which is more round.

since the male holds the fry it has indeed a more pronounced mouth area but that is really only visible on the adults .. on the less than adults when you try to pare them you may not notice that as it is not all that apparent.

Albert