# Sexing juvenile Electric blue Dempseys



## Shortnsweet1025 (May 13, 2004)

I work at a LFS and I've been reading a lot about the color variant of the electric blue jack dempsey. I've read it is possible to sex them when they are older, but is their a way to tell what sex they are when they are very small like an inch and a quarter?


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## Toby_H (Apr 15, 2005)

Shortnsweet1025 said:


> is their a way to tell what sex they are when they are very small like an inch and a quarter?


Nope...

I've been keeping/raising them for a few years and have recently gotten to the point of producing them... There aren't even any solid tale tell signs for sexing them as adults, although (mostly through behavior) it is possible as adults. As juvis I have not seen a single specimen that I could identify as a female until they were at least sexually mature. Also I've had several slower growing weaker fish that I assumed were female turn out to be weaker males... and a couple of faster growing strong fish I assumed were males turn out to be healthy females...


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## Shortnsweet1025 (May 13, 2004)

Ok, so let me ask you this... From what I've read, You have to mate a blue male to a regular female and then out of those babies, you take a female and breed it back to the father to get blue babies... Can you not get blue babies from a blue female?


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## CiChLiD LoVeR128 (Mar 22, 2006)

> From what I've read, You have to mate a blue male to a regular female and then out of those babies, you take a female and breed it back to the father to get blue babies... Can you not get blue babies from a blue female?


The first part is right. The pair must have blue genes in them. You take the babies and you breed a Male and Female will the blue genes and which will give you EBJD's. From what I have read Female EBJD's can spawn and produce but the fry will not live it has something to do with the genetics. You can take an EBJD female and breed it to a Male JD and get fry but you can't take a EBJD Male and Female to get fry.


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