scissorchik

hi there..... have some questions about my silver dollars.. Im a fairly new aquarium fan...I have a 55 gal. with a few different fish ..and three siverdollars two have very little color on their under belly fins(I know they prob. are called something else... but like I said ..Im new at this) and one has a lot of red.. I have been told that the one with the red fin is the male.. but it seems like the other two can't leave each other alone ..are they gay? or could they be a male and female? ..the so called male , he doesn't want anything to do with them..but they are "gettin busy" like every 5 minutes it seems... any info would be great thank you

Chief_waterchanger

Problem is that there are over 100 different species that are imported as silver dollars. Most of them need to be 4 or 5 inches in size before they're old enough to breed. They are egg-scatterers, are you seeing any eggs at all? To save eggs you would need to add fake or real plants so that the eggs can get to where the adults won't eat them. The fry are very small, and will need to be fed 'green water' for the first week or so after they hatch. You can make 'green water' by crushing a lettuce leaf into a bowl and adding fish tank water to it and leaving it for a day. The water will turn green and this can be added in SMALL amounts to the tank with the fry in it. Any attempt to raise fry from eggs requires the removal of the adults from the tank.

As for the fish being or not being homosexual is impossible to say without first identifying what each gender is. A problem with identifying genders if unexperienced is that often times spawning behavior and aggressive behavior appears the same to the untrained eye.

Perhaps you could post pictures?

Allie

The female are usually bigger and thicker bodied than the males. The males get a darker color when flirting reddish/pinkish color. At least the ones we had did.