Gender of my Betta - Is he/she sick

[Iorek]

I'm new to this betta hobby.

I got this betta from local pet store. They said it's female but it get mad when sees other males and can see beard too.

Here are the pics.









it hides always and after few minutes it swims to the top of the aquarium touches the surface and swims back to its hiding spot. Is he/she sick? :((

[Starchild21]

Your pictures aren't showing up for me

[Iorek]

Re added pictures sorry

[sainthogan]

I'm inclined to say female, but I'm really not an expert at all. Females do have beards, though they are not as big as males, and they will flare. My female is very aggressive and flares all the time, her beard is very visible when she flares, but not visible when she's not flaring, or only giving a half-hearted flare. It is quite a bit smaller than my male's beard, which is visible all the time, and very, very large when he flares.

[lilnaugrim]

Yup, that's a female ^^ And yes as stated before, Females also have beards and can be very aggressive. But looking at the body it definitely has the shape of a female, also you see her tummy is very round, she also has a small ovipositer sticking out, but of course that's not always a great indicator since young males can also have them, or imitations of them.

The touching the surface thing is actually them breathing air. Betta's have something called a Labyrinth organ which actually allows them to breathe air since they don't live in very aerated water but rather miles of rice paddie fields. So there's no worry to that :)

The only thing I see that she's got some of her tail missing. I would get some conditioner called Stress Coat, it's got aloe in it which is really good for healing fins and stuff. So every time you do a water change you add that in to get rid of chlorine and heavy metals that can be harmful to your fish. And with the added aloe she should start to grow back her fins fairly quickly if she's got clean water :)

Have you read the sticky threads in the Betta Care section?

[dragonx47]

Yeah, definitely a female. She looks beautiful,. And females are aggressive towards males unless they're breeding.

[Somethingstoofishy]

A female...You can tell by the belly, big and round..females are aggressive, but males actually kill

[ANHEL123]

Hey how is your betta doing do you need any tips on betta care?

[bannlow2471]

A very pretty girl! I have three females (two crown tails and one veil tail) and on two of them you never see them really flare, but the third one flares quite a bit and you can see her "beard" when she does. Then again, she's the largest of the three girls, so maybe it's just easier to see on her.

[BeautifulBetta123]

It is a female, in the last pic you can see the egg spot