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Do Platties change sex? I have 5 and I'm sure that i only had 1 male, suddenly there are 3 males (and some babies). I know that some creatures can change sex during their lives, just wondered if it applies to fish. Telling the difference is straight forward so I'm sure I didn't get it wrong initially.

Chief_waterchanger

There have been very rare instances of such things occuring, but it usually occurs in a setting where there is all of one gender and needs to be another gender. As I said, that is very rare. What tends to happen more is that you have a fish that REALLY appears to be female, but then is a late developer.

It is kind of like with humans, how you can get androgenous males that REALLY appear to be female up until they get years and years into puberty.

I hope that explains what normally occurs.

Richard

One of my high fins actually waited till it got to adulthood before it started to grow it's male organs!.. needless to say, I, along with the rest of the platties in my tank are equally confused.. I kept what I thought was a beautiful female from a batch of fry I had, only to notice a gradual change in its anal fin!.. ah well, he's still a keeper.