Fish Gender Questions

[Vipex23]

I'm not an expert on telling the gender differences of certain fish (in fact, the only fish I can tell a male from a female is a Betta ) so when I bought the fish at the store I assumed the salesman knew what he was talking about, but I just want to confirm it here. You see, my supposed female giant banded gourami has gotten very territorial, especially towards the supposed male and my 2 other blue gouramis. My supposed male giant banded gourami is somewhat of a coward getting chased all the time by both the female and the male blue gourami. My supposed platties I've had for 3 months and I had yet to see any fry. I took pictures of the fish in question so I hope you can tell me if these fish are indeed what I was told they are.

This picture here is my supposed giant banded gourami. She has become very territorial towards all the other gouramis. Is this really a female?

 

[Vipex23]

This is a picture of my cowardly male giant banded gourami. He gets chased away by the supposed female and he is much smaller than the supposed female. Is he really a male?

 

[Vipex23]

This is a picture of my supposed male platy. He chases around the other platy a lot but I have never seen fry in the 3 months they've been here. Is he really a male, or better yet, is he really a platy?

 

[Vipex23]

This is a picture of my supposed female platy. She gets chased around a lot by the above fish but I've never seen fry. Is she female, is she even a platy?

 

[chinaboy1021]

those 2 last fish are definitly not platies. they could be ballon mollys

 

[Davy]

Sorry, I have no idea if those fish are male or female. I just wanted to say Nice Fish! How big are the Blue and the Banded Gouramis in that tank?

 

[Vipex23]

The female banded and male blue are 4 inches, the female blue and male banded are 3 inches.

 

[aklor]

You've got the sex on the two you were told were platys reversed... but I don't know about the others...

I'd think I'd find a different LFS if I were you... not knowing the gender is one thing... not knowing the species of fish is another... though mine's always been honest when the person working doesn't know enough to differentiate between the genders

 

[Vipex23]

Oh, I've found a new place a long time ago for other problems experienced. The place that gave me all these problems is called Petland Discounts. It's a chain around the east coast. Do not buy from them. I now go to Petsmart which has much better service and a more knowledgeable staff.

 

[valdok]

reverse the sex for the other "platies" as you call them, and you've got the right ones.

 

[Vipex23]

Are they platty's or mollies? Are they both female (by what you can tell)?

 

[ducksarefun]

They both look like females to me. Females have a rounded dorsal fin, males have a more pointy dorsal fin, as in the picture below. Perhaps the top pic is a male; it's hard to tell from the angle of the picture.

 

[ducksarefun]

grrr, somethin's screwy

 

[Vipex23]

Please don't say that both of those banded gouramis are both female also.

 

[ducksarefun]

It seems that way. But is that a bad thing? Unless you were planning on breeding them, in which case, you could try returning one to switch for a male (which you can now pick out yourself, now that you can tell the difference) They are beautiful BTW. I haven't seen those before.