Male vs Female Angelfish
Angelfish is one of the most popular fishes among the aquarium fish species because of their unfading beauty. The name angelfish is used mainly because of their beauty. It would be important to know about the male and female differences, as it would permit to proceed through to the breeding of these beautiful creatures. However, it is not very easy to understand which one is the male or female. Very keen and thorough observations should be made about their behaviours, to detect which one is the female. Additionally, there are some slight morphological differences between male and female angelfish.
Body: The body starts to enlarge or swell after they are sexually matured and ready for spawning. The swollen body is much more pronounced in females, to facilitate space for the production of eggs in the ovaries. This enlargement in pronounced around the belly of the female angelfish.
Spawning Behaviours: If the egg laying can be observed, it would be an obvious indication to identify the female from the male. However, that can be appealed, only when, there are two angelfish in a tank.
Crown: Shape of the crown would be very important to understand the males from the female angelfish. The females usually have a straight crown, or sometimes it is slightly curved. On the other hand, the shape of the crown in male angelfish is curved more than slightly curved. However, understanding the correct gender using the crown shape needs at least two comparable members of angelfish. Additionally, according to some angel breeders, there is a hump on the crown of male angelfish, but not in females.
Cloaca: The cloaca of angelfish could be an important feature, as it is wide and slightly large in females, whereas it is narrow and small in males. In addition, the male genital organ, which is a narrow and pointed tube, could be seen when they attempt to eject sperms during copulation. The female also extends her egg-laying organ, which is a rounded tube-like organ, in response to the male during mating.
Summary
Male vs Female Angelfish
• Females have a swollen body during egg production but not the males unless they are overfed.
• Crown shape is straight or slightly curved in females, but it is highly curved in males.
• Wide cloaca in females is comparable with the narrow cloaca of males.
• Breeding tube is narrow and pointed in males, whereas it is wide, round, and blunt in females.
In summary, one or a combination of the above discussed facts could be used to identify the gender of angelfish, but some of those are not purely correct according to many references. The behavioural differences may sometimes occur in the case of an absence of a male in a tank where only females live as one female angel would start to play the male behaviours to stimulate egg laying. In addition, sexually immature angelfish (usually less than one year olds) do not exhibit external differences between genders. However, the breeding tubes and observing the egg laying could be regarded as the definite indicators of identifying the males from females.