Male lab holding?

[user_error]

I have a mixed cichlid tank with mostly yellow labs, several females to what i thought were a pair of males...

So anyway i'm looking in the tank today and see the telltale bulge that one is holding, pull it out and it's the smaller of the males. Or at least i thought it was male, but I checked the mouth definitely a whole bunch of brown eggs in there

So now I'm quite confused about its gender (and maybe this fish is as well), is it even possible for a male to be holding? I'm still fairly new to mouth brooders, but I never thought it could ever work like that... I was 95% certain it was a male based on the coloring... No real mouth darkness like the dominant male, but it has more black than the other females, dark pectoral and anal fin stripes, and even has egg spots on the anal fins as well.

I know other male cichlids like red empress will disguise themselves as females if they are sub-dominant, but this seems to be the reverse and also going well beyond that tactic... Can anyone shed some light on this strangeness for me?

[charles]

yes, the odd time, male will hold as well.

[Mferko]

yep, i had a red zebra do it, i noticed the female holding for a day, then the next day she wasnt and i was all disapointed but i realized the male was holding. it ended in disapointment again a few days later though... i wonder if the female spit it out cuz they werent fertilized and then the male saw and gave it a try? idk i was confused too

[Dough]

I had three labs my self. I thought 1female and 2 males. the 1 female had about 3 broods and on the third or so I noticed the to so called male was a female. now I have 1 male and 2 females. labs are very hard to sex the colors are exact. It is not till later that you will see the male get bigger I think due to the face that the females are not eating for a month a few time per year. as far as egg spots male or female can have them but one can have more. I have seen this to be not a perfect system for sexing. I think the best way if you have the room that is. as the females brood put them into a recovery tank so that they can get their strength back they have not eaten for a month, and 1 by 1 all the females will be in the other tank. if they get pregnant in there then you know that 1 was a male who was carrying. but I think you will find that it was just a very well colored female. I have only had mouth brooders till my jewel cichlids now have about 300 or fry swimming in my 150g. other than that I have had red empress, ob peacocks, blue zebras and yellow labs all breed.

[user_error]

thanks everyone i guess i'll just have to keep an eye on them see if anyone else is in disguise