# best way(s) to tell the gender of petco baby bettas? (first post!)



## CosmicFireflies (Mar 4, 2019)

hello all! this is my first post so I apologize ahead of time if I did anything wrong c':

Sometime this week I'm going over to my local petco to get a baby male betta. My baby female (Spree) who I got 2-3 months ago is doing fantastic so I've decided to get another baby! This time I want to get a male, but I know that petco is not always accurate when it comes to sexing baby bettas. So what's your best advice when it comes to telling their gender?

I'm pretty positive that Spree is a female due to her egg spot and her generally boxy fin shape. I would like to be fully dependent on the egg spot or lack thereof for telling gender, but my adult male dragonscale Moby also has an egg spot, even though I am 99.9 percent positive he is a male (bright colors, flowy and full fins, overall demeanor scream male to me lol).

thanks in advance for your help!


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## bettatanksalot (Mar 6, 2018)

My females all have an egg spot and look rounder in shape then the males, and fins are shorter. However as babies sometimes takes the egg spot a while to develop but when it does it’s pretty clear I’ve got a female.


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## Rana (Apr 27, 2013)

So if you really want to be sure, you need to find the fish's ovaries. I'm attaching some pics where I've circled the area you'd find the ovaries in. A male will have a round belly, and then his abdomen will flatten out because there's not much more than muscle for his tail (see third pic). A female has a triangular bulge behind her belly, which in lighter colored fish you can see quite clearly is bright white under her flesh. If the fish you're looking at is darker, you can try shining a light behind them, which should allow you to see the shadow of their ovaries/lack of them, or watch them as they bend and see if you can see that pale color between their scales.

Of course, if they're really young (Petco used to sell babies super young but they seem to be on the older side now) they might not have their ovaries developed enough to see one way or the other. I know 100% that my baby Viola was a female- I watched her lay eggs once!- but in pics when she was still young, you can't see even the hint of ovaries.








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