My Endlers breed mostly females.

[Aysjelow]

Hello Fish Folks!

I’ve had my endlers in both 10 and 60 gallon tanks. They’ve been consistent in breeding for me. 

Early this summer (April) I set up a 300 gallon pond and moved a few males and females in there. It is now August and I’ve notice that there significantly more females than males. 
 

I always though that it was so since I was just looking from the top. The offspring were still small, so from the top I never saw their color. The babies are a few months old now and a few have gotten their male colors. I even dipped my Go Pro in there to look. This was when I’ve confirmed that they are breeding female heavy. 

By the way, the endlers live with 8 juvenile fantail goldfish in that 300 gallon pond with plants like anubias, pogostemon and water lettuce. I am now thinking that the goldfish may have been seeing the colorful males as a treat and leaving the females alone.

What do you guys think? Any experience with male/female ratio in fish breeding. I know this happens in reptiles, temperature dependent.

Thanks a lot!

- AySjelow ( pronounced like ice-jellow)

[Daniel]

I don't know for sure if this is what is happening to your male Endlers, but there is evidence that males guppies pay a price for having those pretty colors

Predator preference for brightly colored males in the guppy: a viability cost for a sexually selected trait

[MattyIce]

7 minutes ago, Aysjelow-IceJellow said:

Hello Fish Folks!

I’ve had my endlers in both 10 and 60 gallon tanks. They’ve been consistent in breeding for me. 

Early this summer (April) I set up a 300 gallon pond and moved a few males and females in there. It is now August and I’ve notice that there significantly more females than males. 
 

I always though that it was so since I was just looking from the top. The offspring were still small, so from the top I never saw their color. The babies are a few months old now and a few have gotten their male colors. I even dipped my Go Pro in there to look. This was when I’ve confirmed that they are breeding female heavy. 

By the way, the endlers live with 8 juvenile fantail goldfish in that 300 gallon pond with plants like anubias, pogostemon and water lettuce. I am now thinking that the goldfish may have been seeing the colorful males as a treat and leaving the females alone.

What do you guys think? Any experience with male/female ratio in fish breeding. I know this happens in reptiles, temperature dependent.

Thanks a lot!

- AySjelow ( pronounced like ice-jellow)

I had recently read a study that showed males spent up to 45% harassing females resulting in up to a 3 times higher mortality rate than for males kept only with other males.  might be the males aren't surviving as long.

https://phys.org/news/2017-02-sexual-fish-worldmale-guppies.html#:~:text=In the study published in,to being housed with males.

Edited August 18, 2020 by MattyIce

[Wesley]

There is no real "solution" to change the sex ratio as there could be so many factors. What I would suspect is that its temperature / water paramters dependent in combination with genetics or just bad luck.

Ive got the same issue with my platies. I had some fry from previous spawns and they all turned out female. The mom unfortunately died before I got the tank and they all grew up female. My theory is that the male killed off any baby males. Or maybe just a coincidence. 

 

[Errk25]

I have the same type of thing with a red tuxedo koi strain of guppies. From my first pair they have bred 90% males. I’m actually down to one female with a batch of fry and about 20 males. Really hoping for some girls. I have different strain in a colony with same water conditions and they breed about 50/50. Weird. 
 

Edited August 18, 2020 by Errk25

[Aysjelow]

Thanks for the input everybody!

Sometimes I forget that it is nature we are enjoying and sometimes, no matter how we “control” it, it goes its own way.

Thanks again!

[Brandy]

Ok, 2 things here. There is the possibility that you have a sex-linked embryonic lethal recessive trait--this means that if you have 2 copies of the lethal gene you never get born. This only happens with FEMALES because a male is always XY, but a female is XX. So in this case if the X chromosome can carry a lethal gene, you would see fewer and fewer females over generations until the line dies out (what I think is happening with @Errk25's situation). If the Y carried a lethal gene, the offspring of that male would ALWAYS be female. That is incredibly rare, because of long winded boring reasons most of you don't want to know.

However if this is just one single drop, there is a high PROBABILITY of a 50/50 split of sexes in any litter, but a probability is a normally distributed curve--a "bell" curve. There is still the possibility of getting mostly one or the other sex, and if you look at enough drops, or litters, you will see this eventually. It is always surprising, but not magic. It is the flip a coin game, you flip enough and you will get occasional runs of all heads. So, there is that. 

But in the case posted here originally, I think the depredation of the brighter colored males is exactly what you are seeing. This is why I put my guppy fry in species only grow out tanks--especially because they are mutts. If I didn't I would end up with plain wild type fish in just a few generations, because I would be selecting for the most capable of survival, and nature already did that once.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Brandy

[Brandy]

@Errk25, if you do get girls, I have some advice on how to recover the line, feel free to send me a message if you would like. It is going to be a bit of a rough thing without access to gene sequencing, but it might be possible.