My latest fish tales

[DaiMasters]

It could a jewel. I didn't even think African. Juv. Texas do look a lot like Jewels.
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The only reason I thought Jewel Cichlid is I had some with Oscars for awhile. I was told they're an african cichlid that likes water similar to that of sa/ca cichlids.

...I do have a question about the JD's. I'm JD stupid (never had one before). The lady told me they were both JD's but I noticed the smaller one has a separation in his top fin that the larger one doesn't. You can see it in the video. Is this a male/female thing or is one of them not a JD? It doesn't appear to be an injury & was like this when I picked it up.

I've never seen a JD With the split fin like that naturally. It looks like it's missing a couple of spines that it probably lost in a fight. From what I've read it's really difficult to sex Jack Dempseys because of current breeding practices. Apparently some breeders administer hormones to get them to show certain traits. I've read and been told that it used to be that males had pointed fins and females had rounded fins, but that's less often the case now.

One method I've read about recently is looking at the speckles on their gill plates, if the speckles only go halfway down it's a male, and if they go all the way down the gill plate it's female. This is supposedly the most accurate way.

Males:
jack_dempsey_02b.jpgpicture3339ku.jpg

Females:
cichlids30.jpgpicture3444am.jpg