Is it possible to determine the gender of a lionfish?
I’m sure it’s possible, although it’s kind of dangerous to handle the little guys, so most of them don’t get inspected at point-blank range. It’s said that when they are spawning, the male gets darker and the female gets paler, but I can’t find any information on how to tell when they’re not spawning. Apparently lionfish have spawned in tanks, but not often. They are pelagic spawners; they release thousands of tiny eggs into the ocean currents to float freely. The fry are minute and pelagic, floating in planktonic rafts until they are about one-half inch long. This means that even if you could get them to spawn in an aquarium, the young would be very hard to raise. Most of the successes to date in captive breeding of marine fishes have been with the species, such as clownfish and banggai cardinalfish, that do not have pelagic fry. In other words, breeding lionfish will be a major challenge. Good luck!
