How can you tell wether a fish is a male or female?

Question

How can you tell wether a fish is a male or female?

Answer 1

If it makes you rearrange everything in the bowl every two weeks, it's a female.

Answer 2

It depends on the type of fish--bettas, males are brightly colored with long flowing tails---"live bearing fish" if you look closely, you will see a "sword" under its body, egg layers are a little more difficult. Tiger barbs, the males have a "V" in their tail whereas the females indent is rounded. some other egg layers, if ou look at the stomach bladder , the males tend to come to a point whereas females are rounderthe same as the example above. Anglefish (and right now I can't remember which is which but one sex has an indent by the nose and the other has a bump. A fantail goldfish, one sex (when looking stragiht down on it) looks as though the tail has been broken. Out of three pet stores in the area, I am the only one that could tell the sexes because I was the only one who researched it. As most people will tell you, males are brighter color also . Guppies and swordtails can and do sometimes change sexes before becoming adult but it never it explained why.

Answer 3

Sometimes it depends on the coloring of the fish. For sheephead fish, female fish would be a pale pinkish color, and the male of the school would have a bright red body, a black chunky head. I've also heard that sheepheads are all born female, and at one point of their life, the females have a competition, and the strongest female that emerges as the "winner" will change genders and lead the school. But I didn't really look into it, so I don't know if that's true or not.
I looked on wikipedia and it didn't say specifically if there was a way to tell a fish's gender by looking at it. However it did mention different egg-fertilizing methods; some fish lay eggs first and fertilize it later, some fish give birth to live young. There's also many different branches of different kinds of fish, so gender-identification is probably going to be specified to a certain kind of fish.

Answer 4

It depends on what type of fish it is, for some fish to determine the gender can be easy because of special distinct fin patterns in both the male and female and on some fish it can be more difficult. What type of fish it it that your looking for specifically?

Answer 5

The male deep-sea angler fish is much smaller and is permanently attached to the female. It gets a continuous supply of food, and the female gets a continuous supply of eggs.

But I guess you were talking about other fish generally.

Answer 6

It depends on the type of fish. Here's an example

Male bettas have longer tails

Females sometimes have shorter ones

Answer 7

You can tell by the fact that it will lay eggs if it is a female and it will eat the eggs if it is a male.

Answer 8

It depends on what kind of fish it is. Some you can by obvious differences, and some you cannot tell externally.

Answer 9

according to the specie, usually one is typically bigger than the other and has specific characteristics in color or pattern that pretty much tells u whether its female or male

Answer 10

Look between it's legs.

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