Pink Convict x Blood Parrot questions...

[J3ric]

Hello. A little over 3yrs ago I had purchased from my LFS two Pink Convicts and two Blood Parrots. To my surprise my male Pink and Female Parrot produced fry, and just kept on and on.... from the first batch I kept two. 3yrs later i still have them. My questions are, are these hybrids known for hermaphroditism? Why is one of them a splotchy orange/white color and the other switch on and off from a deep orange to a pale orange? I used to think I had a female and male but recently a friend was rehoming her male parrot and since I had never had any aggression issues before I brought it in, well that did not work out. After 5.5 week quarantine I put them together. My male, the one that switches from deep orange to pale orange and who has the bigger nuchal hump became a little devil. After I removed that parrot the second, splotchy, one started showing signs of aggression and now is forming a nuchal hump and is flashing, banging up against the tank while in front of the other. They are not aggressive with one another though.. Any thoughts? Attached are the two and one of the parents with their first clutch which these two came from.

 

[Red Cichlids]

Beautiful fish! Those are the nicest convict cross fish I've seen. Does one of them have streamers on his tail?

Not known for hermaphroditism, and I think you just have two males who grew up together and are buddies. They might get along for life, or they might start fighting tomorrow and have to be separated.

Color comes and goes depending on food and water conditions, so I think everything is normal. Those boys are probably sterile. How big are they? 6" plus?

 

[J3ric]

Beautiful fish! Those are the nicest convict cross fish I've seen. Does one of them have streamers on his tail?

Not known for hermaphroditism, and I think you just have two males who grew up together and are buddies. They might get along for life, or they might start fighting tomorrow and have to be separated.

Color comes and goes depending on food and water conditions, so I think everything is normal. Those boys are probably sterile. How big are they? 6" plus?

Thanks! Reason I kept just the two. The one with the bigger nuchal hump has/had streamers on his dorsal and anal fin but lost the one on his anal during the fight with the blood parrot I put in there. All three of them were fighting it was intense. I had never saw anything like it in my five years of fish keeping. But his dorsal fin seems to be coming back. For what ever reason the second one does not have that feature. It's crazy how different they are from each other seeing as how they were from the same spawning.

I just measured and one with the bigger nuchal hump is a little over 7inches and the other is is a little over 6.5 inches. They are certainly larger than their parents.

I figured that they would be sterile. I have put in some female convicts awhile back but the two showed no interest in them and actually bullied them. Originally the reason I had thought the smaller one was a female. Because they acted like a breeding pair would.

Makes sense about the food and color correlation.. He does become more orange when I feed him more fresh foods. He has been on pellets for the last month simply because I have not had time to go out and get the foods I feed to him fresh. But thanks for your comment, I have never posted about them and was always so curious about the different features they have from each other and then just recently with the smaller one 'flashing'.

 

[Red Cichlids]

They both really look like males, though their behavior does seem like a pair. The larger one is definitely a male, and I would say with 90% surety the smaller one is a male too, but I have seen female midas that don't look unlike it. If you've never seen eggs in three years, that would also be a sign they are both males. Raise the temperature a little and put a flower pot in there and see if they clean it.

 

[J3ric]

They both really look like males, though their behavior does seem like a pair. The larger one is definitely a male, and I would say with 90% surety the smaller one is a male too, but I have seen female midas that don't look unlike it. If you've never seen eggs in three years, that would also be a sign they are both males. Raise the temperature a little and put a flower pot in there and see if they clean it.

Thanks, I'll try that. Though I am certain you are correct. But it would be a nice little experiment. Sadly they are the last of my fish, my last tank broke during my move and I had to rehome the parents and a few others. They are the only ones that I could not let go of. Thanks for your help.

 

[Eclipse390]

Those are some beautiful fish! IME, Convicts & all their crosses are just jerks in general. My old BR Parrot would change color constantly depending on her mood, breeding, feeding, etc. So I would probably consider it normal for Parrot crosses

 

[J3ric]

Those are some beautiful fish! IME, Convicts & all their crosses are just jerks in general. My old BR Parrot would change color constantly depending on her mood, breeding, feeding, etc. So I would probably consider it normal for Parrot crosses

Same with my female BR, mostly when she was getting ready to breed. That's why I found it strange that my boys were now doing it. Thanks for the comment!

 

[Red Cichlids]

In answer to why they are differently colored, the smaller one is pied, or "creamsicle", a color pattern that is common in the Amphilophus genus that red devils and Midas come from (which is one half of the parrot cichlid makeup). For some reason, fish that are red and white always have more intense red coloration than those that are solid red, which remain a little lighter.

 

[coltiger1975]

Beautiful convict hybrids, years ago I had midevils x convict. One I had was piebald with red eyes he never developed a hump like that.