imo they do not need the female to achieve supermale colours. The blue being the trait of the supermale.

See
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y23...b08/flame3.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y23...eb08/flame.jpg

in real life the blue is even more prominent however to the untrained eye this is not a big trait of the flame males.

If you recall mine came in singly and went more then a year without seeing a female. In this time the blue only intensified.

I've only seen 3-4 of these guys in person and the other time I saw them with females they did not look as colourful. This could be due to the fact they were smaller.

I can't say for certain all males become supermales otherwise what's the point of calling them supermales? Adult would be a better term. As far as I can tell from searching on RC not all males have the blue. If I had more room / setups I'd be willing to try a plain male too, however since I'm only running one tank that is an idea environment for these guys I want one that is showing at least some blue that can be brought out like my old guy. I know this may sound extremely anal, but I had the fish which imo was the perfect fish and better then anything else I've seen in the 1000s of marine fish we see come in every few weeks here. He shouldn't have died and now I'm doing my best to replace him before Hawaii restricts fish collection.