PlanetCatfish.com

Hi all,
Thought I'd draw on the incredible collective intelligence here and ask...
I have a rather substantial group of adult chocolate plecos measuring 9-14 inches and would like to positively determine their genders. They appear quite similar in fins and body shapes but are not extremely nourished (yet) and are gobbling bright dark green algae at an amazing rate, thought I'd feed spirulina disks, blanched zuchini and squash but think they like some protein too. So any conditioning nutrition advice would be appreciated as well.
I'm an experienced fish breeder, mostly cichlids (all kinds), but barbs, tetras and others so I'm familiar with usual dimorphisms but they all appear rather slim, with very equal finnage.
It's probably redundant, but these are quite light colored and I've seen, bought and sold them as "albino chocolate plecos" but obviously not a true albino.
I'm certainly interested in breeding them, any words of wisdom will be utilized.
Thanks everyone.
P.S. Not a usual poster, more of a lurker LOL but decades from newbie-ism.

Well, let's discuss breeding first: These fish are bred in large ponds, where the male will find/dig a hole in the pond wall that is about 2-3feet (0.5-1m) deep. So if you intend on keeping them in a tank, you can probably forget about breeding them - and I'm not sure it's much point in breeding these particular fish - they are fairly easy to get hold of and don't cost much (unless they are quite large).

Then it comes to sexing - which is probably a lot easier to do if they are "full bodied", but you should be able to tell that the males have thicker pectoral fin ray and possibly a slight orange tint to the fins. Otherwise, it's "venting". Females have little or no visible external sex organ - and it's rounded, where the male will have a bit of a "bump" and more pointed. If you have several, I'd say you can sex them based on that, because you can compare them (assuming of course you do have more than one sex in the group). It can be hard to sex an individual through "venting", but if you have a group with both males and females it should be possible to see the difference.

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Mats