Jewel Cichlid (male or Female)

[realoregonian]

Hello all and thank you for stopping by.
I have a small problem that I need help on. I have 2 Jewel Cichlids and need to know how to tell if they are male or female. I had to take them out of my 55 gallon tank and put them in to a smaller holding tank 10 gallon. The reason they were removed from the tank was do to the fact they had killed both my red tailed tiger barbs. One was bright RED and the other one is a brownish red. Onec I removed them from the tank they both went to brownish red. Plaese help and thank you for it..

[2manyfish]

The one that was brighter red was no doubt the male. But you need to know that you cannot keep them in that 10g. In such a small tank the male will end up killing the female. It is their nature to be aggressive especially when guarding eggs or territory. Either you need to take them back to the LFS or rearrange your 55g for them. Without knowing your stock list, if you were to redo your fish in there, you would want to remove any bottom dwelling fish, any other cichlid*, and any fish that are slower than they are. What you would want to keep are fish that tend to live in the upper areas of the tank that are fast.
*Other medium sized cichlids can be kept but you must provide a broken line of sight within the tank. In other words, the male jewel will take a territory on say the right side of the tank. His area might take about half the tank. You then need to break up the middle ground with a visual barrier. Rocks, driftwood, thick groupings of plants, that kind of thing. The other fish will then have the other half of the tank to live in. With fish it really is "out of sight, out of mind".....
It is also important to provide the female jewel areas where she can get away from the male. Small caves on the opposite side of the males' territory is good. You do this because when she isn't ready to breed he will turn aggressive towards her.
But if you are unwilling to devote half of the 55g to them and rehome some of the other fish, then the best thing you can do is to return the jewels to the LFS.
HTH



BTW, this should be moved as jewels are african cichlids not from south american.