# Is my rainbow fish a female?



## lkfishy (May 13, 2012)

I got 3 rainbow fish 6-7 months ago, one red, one boesemani, and one turquoise ( I know your supposed to have more, but they do well). I'm not sure how old they were but since then the Boesemani and the red have grown broad chests and started to look mature, while the turquoise has gotten bigger in length but not in broadness. 

My Boesemani has been known to flash his purple colors when I turn the light on in the morning, and when they get fed, but just recently he started getting very flashy towards my turquoise rainbow. The whole front half of him turns bright purple and he vibrates super fast right next to the turquoise and they kind of swirl around together in circles before the turquoise shoots off and the boesemani follows. To me it looks like they are trying to get together, but I thought my turquoise was a male!










This is a picture I found on the internet, but it looks exactly like my fish.The only difference is mine is older.The fish in this picture is female and identical in color and shape to mine, but I was told at the store they were all males.What do you guys think? And this may be a stupid question, but can boesemani rainbows even breed with other types of rainbows or do you have to have a male and female of the same type?


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## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

Hybridization has ruined a lot of rainbow species in the hobby. They would never meet in the wild, but in tanks, they cross very easily.
And that's a female.


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## lkfishy (May 13, 2012)

Ok, that makes sense.I'm pretty sure mine is a female then.As they are growing the other two are looking much more masculine than her and all the pics I found online point to her being a girl. Assuming thats correct I have 2 males and 1 female, which probably isn't good. I wish the pet store people knew what they were talking about


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## katanamasako (Jun 29, 2012)

I don't know a lot about rainbows, but i do know the idiot at the petstore says all the angelfish in the tank are male when they're only an inch long, you can't tell the breed of an angel (at least from what i've been told) unless they're full grown and paired off. even then, my mother had some females and some males that would try breeding with the same gender at times. so it's really hard to tell, especially with no idea about the different species. no offense, but i think the store clerk was just trying to get you to buy one without taking forever to pick one out. I know several people like that and it irks me to no end. I've seen them tell kids that all the guppies in the store were male, when there were signs on certain tanks that said FEMALE on them. You really have to know your fish to keep from getting screwed over sometimes. the worst thing I've seen so far, is guppies being sold as killifish, and the store making a killing off of them just because of the name.


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