brianl78

how to tell male and female ausrtrialian rainbow fish the are silverish in color and i was wondering how to tell the difference i got some from work tonight and brought home i really like them the are pretty colorful thanks alot brian

capekate

Hi Brian
Its usually hard to tell the gender of rainbows when you first bring them home, as they are pretty immature at that point. As they age you will have a better chance of Iding the gender. The males tend to be wider with a fuller hump on their back. The females tend to be slimmer in body size without that tell tale hump.Depending on what species of rainbows you have, the males tend to color up more than the females.
Good luck with your bows... I just love their personality!

brianl78

what should i feed them to help them color up real good some freeze dried stuff or what

jdhef

A varied diet of flake, freeze dried bloodworms, brine shrimp, tubiflex worms & some frozen bloodworms.

capekate

hi Brian
As Jdhef has mentioned, these are good foods for a healthy fish. I personally do not use freeze dried bloodworms, but use Hakari frozen Bloodworms instead. I use frozen brine shrimp as well as a 1mm size pellet by New Life Spectrum. I use the tiny pellets as the rainbows have a narrow throat opening and larger pellets can cause problems.
I feed my guys thawed frozen bloodworms in the am, pellets at lunch and for dinner they get thawed frozen brine shrimp.
Your guys will get big and colorful on a diet like that!

jdhef

Kate

The other night it looked like one of my Boseman's had something black in his mouth, and he appeared to be chewing it. I couldn't imagine what it could possibly be, so I was keeping an eye on him. He was kinda off by himself, and whenever one of the other Boseman's approached, he would scoot away.

I was really fearful that maybe somehow a piece of carbon from my filter got out of the bag and discharged into the tank. I was really nervous for him. Suddenly, he spit out the black thing, then immediatly ate it again. It was quick, but I was able to see it was a house fly! I guess he was one happy Rainbow nabbing a treat like that.