Black Convicts

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The.MiniTard

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Feb 2, 2021
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So in September of '20 we got a fish tank for the living room, after seeing our sons success with his personal fish tank(He has Oscars, Green Terrors, and Flowerhorns, that I posted in the Flowerhorn section).

So I went and got a 29 gallon tank and did the typical newbie thing lol. That's right!! I overstocked it with fish in an uncycled tank smh. I didn't lose any fish!!

Went through the whole cloudy tank stage and after that, we noticed the other fish starting to huddle in the corner near the filter. I had no idea why they were doing that because they all usually swam freely. Well , one day I started watching them and I noticed that the two Convicts were kind of guarding an area in a back corner, and taking turns coming out to eat or scare off other fish. So I looked where they were guarding and I saw a bunch of eggs!! That was it, I started paying more attention to the tank and I realized that the Convicts weren't even letting the other fish eat, so we got them all out of there, and gave them away.

They hatched the eggs and have been living in the tank ever since.

My plan with these fish is to get them sorted into smaller tanks so I can pick out some very nice looking ones to try and breed some dark ones, some light one, and whatever else looks nice. No cross breeding here after a few spawns I want to purchase a true convict from Central America, I just want to get some really good convicts.

Jump in with any suggestions, ideas, or criticisms......thanks
 
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Sounds fun! Convicts are a good cichlid to breed and fun to watch doing it. They are evil when breeding though. I would say you can take a lot of the babies and like you said breed them, take them to your lfs for store credit, or just use them as feeders for larger fish.
Got any Pics?
 
The.MiniTard said:
So in September of '20 we got a fish tank for the living room, after seeing our sons success with his personal fish tank(He has Oscars, Green Terrors, and Flowerhorns, that I posted in the Flowerhorn section).

So I went and got a 29 gallon tank and did the typical newbie thing lol. That's right!! I overstocked it with fish in an uncycled tank smh. I didn't lose any fish!!

Went through the whole cloudy tank stage and after that, we noticed the other fish starting to huddle in the corner near the filter. I had no idea why they were doing that because they all usually swam freely. Well , one day I started watching them and I noticed that the two Convicts were kind of guarding an area in a back corner, and taking turns coming out to eat or scare off other fish. So I looked where they were guarding and I saw a bunch of eggs!! That was it, I started paying more attention to the tank and I realized that the Convicts weren't even letting the other fish eat, so we got them all out of there, and gave them away.

They hatched the eggs and have been living in the tank ever since.

My plan with these fish is to get them sorted into smaller tanks so I can pick out some very nice looking ones to try and breed some dark ones, some light one, and whatever else looks nice. No cross breeding here after a few spawns I want to purchase a true convict from Central America, I just want to get some really good convicts.

Jump in with any suggestions, ideas, or criticisms......thanks
Click to expand...

The Convict Cichlid is the one of the common species that breed very easily than most other Cichlid species. If you plan on breeding for profit it won't really be worth it imo. Most lfs I go to will always have Convicts. Btw there are other species closely related to the Convict. Also if you want Cichlids that are wild caught checkout Tangledupincichlids and COTA (Cichlids of the Americas). That was a great thing to remove the other fish or they would have been killed a 29 gallon would be the minimum for a pair of Convict's.
 
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Convicts are great. One of my favorites. There a a bunch of strains in the hobby like Pink, or marbled, that you could play with the genes of.
Only "criticism" would be that eventually I think a 29 gallon will be a bit on the small for a pair, but you've got some time.
There are lots of other species related to convicts like Jexnell Jexnell mentioned. Nothing wrong with staying with good old convicts (though you won't get any $$ for the fry) if you want to. But might be interesting to try other similar species and people would be interested in buying them. Some species like Amatitlania Myrnae are on the CARES list, so breeding and distributing these species is good for conservation.
 
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