4 Zebs to zex, I'm hoping 1 male and 3 females!

We all know how difficult it is to identify the sex of these fish, so please post a picture in here and we'll try to help you (or at least give an educated guess!).
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Linzi Zeb
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4 Zebs to zex, I'm hoping 1 male and 3 females!

Post by Linzi Zeb »

Hi everyone,

Could you please advise on the sex of the following zebs
Zeb 1 is my suspected male, he had taken up a cave too until I added zeb 4 (details to follow)

Zebs 2 and 3 I think might be female, or one female and a subdominant male

zeb 4 is a new zeb I've added in the last couple of days. She's bigger than the other three and has swiftly ousted my male from his cave, resulting in some scuff marks on his flanks. She has been in this tunnel ever since!
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Post by Jo's Zebs »

Its a bit hard to be sure from the pictures but I think the bottom 2 are male cant be 110% mind cant comment on the other 2 I have no clue from the shots sorry
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Linzi Zeb
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Post by Linzi Zeb »

Hi Jo,

So you think zeb 3 and zeb 4 are male? Zeb 4 was sold to me as a definite female so that's interesting.

I'm sorry about the poor quality of the photos I will try and get better ones. I was hoping it would be as follows:

zeb1 male
zeb2 female
zeb3 sub male/female
zeb4 female with hairy features!

Thanks for your help,

Linzi
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Post by Jo's Zebs »

I am going by the triangle head its a dead give away I call them shovel heads try and get a shot of them altogether from above it will help :D
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Linzi Zeb
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Post by Linzi Zeb »

Ok, so any advice on catching these guys? I have to admit I failed on my initial attempt. I'm not too experience when it comes to catching catfish. Zebs are my first colony and previously my main catfish was a 13" monster, and I just pick him up. I managed to catch and photograph one zeb (Either zeb 2 or zeb 3, I'll ID from tail and post photo shortly) but the other three were either too fast or just wouldn't come out of their caves.

I could see that I was stressing them out so gave it up as a bad job for the day. Any advice? I guess I'm gonna have to get the hang of this just in case any babies ever arrive!

Thanks,

Linzi
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Linzi Zeb
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Post by Linzi Zeb »

Hi,

So the zeb I've got the new photo of is the same zeb as zeb3 in the previous round of photos...please note in real life this zeb has nice vibrant stripes, this photo looks rather washed out, combo of bad photography and a bit of stress on the part of the zeb I think...the zeb is back to his/her normal self now.

So...what do you think?


Thanks,

Linzi
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Post by Jo's Zebs »

Female :D :D quite normal for it to be stressed on handling mine are the same :)
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Post by Linzi Zeb »

I have a female!! I'm so relieved, I was beginning to think that I'd managed to buy four males, which would have been a bit of a shame to say the least. Having said that I've just re-worked their tank and I'm loving watching their interactions.

I'll try to get a photo of all of them together over the next couple of weeks as I would really love to know just what I'm ratios I have but like I say, I'm just happy to be able to own a group of these wonderful fish!

Thanks Jo,

Linzi
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