Is my Cacatuoides orange male or female?

[Josefine]

Hi, I’m Josefine from Sweden. I’m new to fish keeping but my husband has some experience.

We recently bought what we thought was a young cacatuoides pair (that’s what we were told at the store). We introduced them to our aquarium that night and sadly, the following morning one of them died. (Every other fish in the tank is OK and still is. Water parameters are fine.)

We never really got the time to have a proper look at the new pair since they were hiding first and then it was night. So we are not exactly sure which one that died. We think the one remaining is a Female but would really appreciate some of your expertise. The fish is young, not quite two inches long.
Thank you so much in advance.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

We think the one remaining is a Female but would really appreciate some of your expertise. The fish is young, not quite two inches long.

I'm pretty poor at both sexing and identification, but probably female for me.

cheers Darrel

 

[Josefine]

Hi all,

I'm pretty poor at both sexing and identification, but probably female for me.

cheers Darrel

Thank you for your reply!
We were just at the LFS and asked for help with sexing before buying one more fish. The person we talked to turned out to be an Apisto breeder we haven’t met him before. He said it probably is a young male we have so we bought a female. I guess we will just have to wait and see how this one matures but better two females than two males I guess. Then we can always buy a mature male later.

 

[anewbie]

I would lean toward male just because of the amount of colour in the fin. I haven't seen any female cockatoo with that much colouring....

 

[Josefine]

I would lean toward male just because of the amount of colour in the fin. I haven't seen any female cockatoo with that much colouring....

Thank you, I believe you are right.

 

[tolstoy21]

I've had females with a decent amount of coloration in their fins. I've also had my share of "sneaker males" where I was convinced the specific fish was female, but when separated from the rest of the fish, it transformed into male. So, I'd say that you just have to wait it out and see how they develop.

The finnage looks female to me in both of your pics, at this current moment. At 2", they should be starting to be sex-able, but I've been fooled before by subdominant males.

Pics attached are of two of my recent females.

 

[anewbie]

Yea I was going to post an update; I was looking at flip aquatic website and they show a picture of a female with a lot of colours - sorry i didn't do it sooner. The ones i had had no colour on the fineage but they also had other 'real' problems due to (I presume) heavy inbreeding. Oddly the one that has lasted the longest (and is still alive) is a run male with a deformed mouth. He has trouble eating because of his deformity but he has outlived all his siblings by a significant amount of time (more than a year).