# Are most fish store Africans males? Can't find females.



## EHryan (Dec 10, 2005)

I have been trying to get the perfect male to female ratio in my Mbuna tank for much longer than I had expected.

It seems as if 1 out of every 5 common Mbuna I buy are males. Yellow labs, Hongi, Pearlmuts...if I walked into a fish store and saw all female tanks of each of those I'd have all my aggression problems solved in a day. But most are young and not sexed.

So I thought about looking for a breeder online but a guy who works at my LFS said that most breeders wont sell females, and that most shipments of fish they get are mostly males, and that's intentional from the breeders.

Is that true? I'm done with buying juvenile fish and growing them and having to wait and see what I have. Mostly likely they are almost all male and going back anyway. The last female lab I found was a holding adult that someone had brought in. I got lucky.


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

EHryan said:


> It seems as if 1 out of every 5 common Mbuna I buy are males.


Sounds like a good male/female ratio to me...

Females are just as common in the LFS around here as males, especially of the dimorphic species. Males are snatched up pretty quickly, since they tend to colour up as soon as the previously dominant male leaves the tank.

As a former breeder, I can tell you that there is no way a breeder would hord up all his/her females and not sell them! You'd be overrun with females.

Kim


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## Dewdrop (Nov 20, 2007)

I'm thinking the OP ment 1 out of 5 are female...judging by the complaint.


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## Phantasmal (Jun 5, 2007)

I'm in the same boat as the OP. I was hoping to get some females in the original 16 "mixed" guys I bought at my LFS. It seems that all my guys are indeed GUYS. Everyone in my tank is over 1.5" inches and there doesn't seem to be any "breeding dislpays" from any of them. No one within a 50 mile radius sells any Africans that are "sorted". Meaning males in 1 tank and females in another. Everything is mixed together, and I'm sure that the OP doesn't want to pay $15-$25 per fish in the adult size. (that's the price down here in the Dallas area). 'Cuz I know I don't want to. The only thing I can say to the OP is find a breeder that deals to a fish store near you and talk to him/her to see if you can work something out to get more "guaranteed" females to that particular store.

HTH.


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## liquidkiwi (Apr 26, 2008)

Actually at the local shop I've found it's contrary to that. I have great difficulty locating males. Initially I wanted to keep C. azureus but found only females in the tank. Males had been out of stock for weeks.

In the end I bought 4 peacocks and one of them was the last male in the entire tank. According to the shop owner, a number of aquarists have set up male-only tanks and that's all they're after. Fortunately I'd rather have just 1 male of each species and a number of females so it makes buying a lot easier. Females are cheaper, too.


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

liquidkiwi said:


> Actually at the local shop I've found it's contrary to that. I have great difficulty locating males. Initially I wanted to keep C. azureus but found only females in the tank. Males had been out of stock for weeks.


We have a LFS nearby that stocks alot of wild caughts. Since they are already adult size and showing proper colouration, if you aren't an early bird when the shipment comes in, all that will be left in the tank are females. 

I don't want to spend the $ for a wild female if I have to "pair" her off with a tank raised male!

I'm wondering if maybe the "male heavy" LFS are stocking for colour only, telling the breeders to only bring what already looks good for quick sale???

Kim


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## liquidkiwi (Apr 26, 2008)

cichlidaholic said:


> We have a LFS nearby that stocks alot of wild caughts. Since they are already adult size and showing proper colouration, if you aren't an early bird when the shipment comes in, all that will be left in the tank are females.
> 
> I don't want to spend the $ for a wild female if I have to "pair" her off with a tank raised male!
> 
> ...


That's usually what happens I guess...a breeder brings in new stock into the shop and the males are gone in a matter of days. Naturally I could leave my contact details and ask the shop owner to call me when something arrives, but at this time I've just about completed a tank setup with no need to buy anything more.

I think it was sheer luck to have been able to find a single male in that Sunshine Peacock tank, but maybe he's a dud and got overlooked when people didn't notice his mild coloration.

Not sure if there are other Australians at this forum who can comment on this but I've been told that, because we hardly import any fish at all, pretty much everything is bred locally and it's extremely difficult to get wild-caught stock. Unfortunate, because it'd be nice to add some desirable bits to a gene pool.


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