peppermint growth?

[Skyedge]

Hi I have some peppermints at around 1 year old, some are bigger than the other, but no one has grown bristle up around the nose. Does it mean I have all female, or does it take more than a year for a male to grow their bristle?

Can anyone enlighten me..?

Cheers.

[chorrylan]

Unfortunately peppermints are far more variable in this regard than say plain bristlenose...

I have generally found when growing up large numbers that some alpha-males will identify themselves around 5-6cm well within their first year growing whiskers etc and in the process suppressing the others.

Some of those suppressed ones can take years (literally) to come out of the cupboard and show their whiskers.

With small numbers you may not get an alpha-male showing but this does not neccessarily mean all the others are females. I've had people buy spare males from me to add to a colony of supposed females 2 or 3 years old only to find one of those "females" suddenly decide it's time to switch sides of the gender boat.

There are other factors that give an indication of gender also, eg males will tend to grow larger, particularly having larger heads and longer faces yet will have smaller waistlines than females.

[Skyedge]

Hi Laurie,

Thanks for the input.

There are 3 bigger ones are around 8-9 cm, and 2 smaller ones are around 6-7 cm, but none of them have bristles.

Maybe I am having slow grower males? or maybe I should buy a mature male? at what age do they start to breed..? 2-3 years..?

[rosco]

I did the same thing with my peppermints. I originally bought 3 of them and after 3 years they did turn out to be all girls. I bought a mature male but it still took another 4 -6 months before they started.

About a year or so ago I did add another 10 fry (of which I think I still have 8). When I put the big boy in another young male appeared not long after that so that may have also have brought on breeding along with a wet/dry season thing that I tried.

cheers

rosco