Trying to determine the gender of your discus fish can often be tricky but if you know how, it should be easy. Most novice fishkeeper will have a hard time trying to figure out which one is male or female but if you observe carefully you will notice that there’s a difference. The article here will share with you the knowledge to identify correctly and collect the best pair for mating.

Before I start, I would like to stress that there is no surefire method but if you follow close observation, there’s a high chance you might be correct. The first and foremost thing to look at is the anal fish. The fins are located right or close to the fish waste discharge point, so you should not miss them. Determine whether the shape of the fin is round or pointy. For the male, usually the length is longer due to extended growth while for the female it is rather short and it ends in a round shape.

Next trait, which you can use for your observation, is the color and marking pattern on your discus fish. If you have a batch of fish which are all blue diamond, pigeon from the same variant, then it’s possible to use this to determine the gender. Usually what you can notice is that the female will have more striking coloration while the male fish color tends to look off. In terms of pattern arrangement, the pattern is better well formed so you should be able to distinguish this clearly.

Finally, if everything else fails and doesn’t offer any significant trait to determine the gender, the best bet is to use the size as a guide. Male discus fish should be larger while the female is smaller. However, this may not be accurate as sometimes the opposition can occur due to external factors that play a major role such as diet and living condition.

If you can’t accurately find out whether it is male or female, well, I would say you just have to wait until they start to pair off and mating partner. Egg layer should be the female and paired up discus fish will live together until they die or separated.