# Are all African Cichlids born and stay a certain gender?



## Matman1110 (Oct 13, 2011)

Like for example when a cichlid is born, is it born a male or female and then stay that gender for its entire life or is it born with an undefined gender and as it matures it becomes either male or female?

Im not talking about when we sex cichlids which usually isnt defined until the cichlid is older, but just from birth does it have a defined gender from the start?

Also do Africans have the ability to change their gender as they mature?

Thanks in advance


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## vann59 (Jun 20, 2011)

They don't bend gender that I know of. 

They are whatever they are, but males will usually have better color.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

Matman1110 said:


> Like for example when a cichlid is born, is it born a male or female and then stay that gender for its entire life?


In general, yes.



Matman1110 said:


> Im not talking about when we sex cichlids which usually isnt defined until the cichlid is older, but just from birth does it have a defined gender from the start?


In general, yes.



Matman1110 said:


> Also do Africans have the ability to change their gender as they mature?


For many years the answer was absolutely no. 99% of the time when people think their fish changed gender, it is because the gender was not correctly identified. However, there was a recent article by respected Malawi scientists that documented a cichlid changing gender in a lab. Auratus I think it was. The tank was all one gender at the start.

So can it happen? Yes. Is it likely? No.


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## heaya (Oct 18, 2011)

if you have a specific breed in mind, you can google their scientific name and see if there's any studies about which fish you would be interested in. there are fish that experience sequential hermaphroditism, but i think very few if any cichlids that do. i've read a few things on the hercules cichlid being a protogynous sequential hermaphrodite in captivity.


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## Chromedome52 (Jul 25, 2009)

I'm not aware of any studies on haplochromines, but I do know that some West Africans have sex ratios determined by pH, temperature, or crowding. _Pelvicachromis _species are well known to be influenced by pH, usually around 6 weeks of age. That was an experiment that was published over 30 years ago in a study that included mostly New World Cichlids, but Kribs were tested as well. It has since been retested and verified.


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