Not trying to be disagreeable (but I am so good at it!) but the dorsal extensions, lack of color in the belly, and slightly concave belly profile all suggest male to me. It does appear to be a very young fish, so I would take pretty much any sexing ID with a big grain of salt.
These new color morphs just get tougher and tougher to tell lol. Mine is very young though.
But Biz, your male has no spangles on the body at all, and that is atypical as an individual; may be the result of the black mutation.
Verrry interestink. If I had tanks up and running, I'd be out looking for some of these. Probably at Preuss in Lansing.
Its beyond annoying! haha! I am starting to think the body spangles play a huge roll here. I really do. And no one can disagree with that since no one truly knows how to sex this morph! haha If the body spangles end up playing as much of a roll as I am starting to think....they might turn out to be very easily sexed!It’s kind of annoying these aren’t as easy to sex as their wild counterpart, lol. !
Honestly, with the regular ol’ Blue Ram, I like using the spangle method. Though like chromedome52 mentioned, you have to be careful of how you conclude whether the spangles are in the black dot, or surrounding the black dot. That’s where I think people can get confused. Of course it also depends on the strain too. Severely inbred strains is where I think the males can sometimes have those spangles IN the black because, granted, shiny blue spangles catch the eye.
Bolivians are my favorite to sex because the breeding tube is pretty easily seen, males are sharp and small, females are big and round. If only these were that way
Just to be annoying (which, as you know, I am very good at!) I wonder if these color variations are the result of homozygous vs heterozygous conditions? I could imagine a situation where a homozygous fish would be flat black, while the heterozygous fish can still develop some spangling. I seem to have noticed that the spangled fish are a little lighter in color, as well. If that's the case, you may still have additional females that are flat black because they are homozygous for the black gene.
Watch the other fish closely, see if anything happens.