Thank you Emma for your reply. When scrolling down to post, I was looking again at your pic of "father&son" really very nice ... I think taking fish pics and collecting cool motivs could be an Art and a hobby by itself.
Since last night I also have a "family". Of the 5 in the LFS, I thought to be able to distinguish 2 Ladies (hopefully). Lets better say they did not show the male fences. The ones I got have 1.85" total lenght (4.6 - the left one and 4.8cm the right one). 2 guys in the store definitely had fences. However, its hard to figure out when they are in the bag, even though I brought a magnifying lens.
My new ones additionaly to the missing fence, show, in the side-view, a smoother, more streamline forehaed. The male forehead goes pretty steep. In the top-view, the fins are "radius-ed" (bigger radius in the front) more than the male´s. Both those signes are also called out in Martins spec´s. So I´m actually confident about my choice, lets see...
What worries me more, the hopefully-females are still breathing at higher rate. The male was breathing fast at store, but calmed down very quick in my tank. The girls are still not completetly relaxed and I worry about parasites in the gils (the male´s breathing is hardly visible).
When getting into the tank, the male was very clear targeting "sites". Systematically checked out each of the variuos hiding places and rocks. I noticed they all like to visit shelter-like constructions (caves). Male is typically sleeping at night (I´m checking occasionaly). Females were swimming around the tank (fairly quick) at night, in opposite directions, as if they have had no room for swimming the years before. It almost made me nervous (why are they doing that?), He never did that.
They did not seek each other´s company, except the "hello-Kiss" (literally!) and a little more (he went on top of her back for a short moment), when he discovered one of the ladies.
The right one has a little finer pattern, than the left.
Sorry for the very poor pic quality. Unfortunately it will take a while until I´ll get a propper camera. But at least I´m able to show pattterns etc.
The one on the left
The right one
