Check this out

[Aaron427]

just got these convicts today very interesting color it is marbles on almost a yellow color thier was only two of them in a shipment of about 50 that I picked up from a local importer/fish store of this color the guy claims they are wild I didn’t know that the marbled gene was something that showed up in the wild also I was reading a post about convicts from a couple years ago where is was asking for a picture of marbled not on pink background well here you go. Please comment on what you think I’m hoping atleast one of them is female to breed to to see if I can duplicate it. Also pictures of what I assume to be a very big and well colored female

 

[Gourami Swami]

look like they might be hybrids to me tbh, head looks slanted and coloration, would have me think maybe amphilophus.

 

[Aaron427]

look like they might be hybrids to me tbh, head looks slanted and coloration, would have me think maybe amphilophus.

Do you mean just the marbled ones? That makes me sad :-( why do you say that based on color I wasn’t aware of any cichlids that naturally have that marbled coloration

 

[mattison187]

X2 looks like amph hybrids

 

[Aaron427]

So what would happen if I breed the “hybrid” back to my big wild caught convicts?

 

[Gourami Swami]

So what would happen if I breed the “hybrid” back to my big wild caught convicts?

that would make more hybrids that are mostly convict. This is exactly why lots of people don't like hybrids. They get into the hands of irresponsible LFS's that convince people it is some rare wildcaught morph and charge more, or they just sell them as purebred fish. Amphilophus species often have that black "marbled" look when young and then it "fades" into the common orange and white as they get bigger. If these are amph x con (no way to tell you for sure, but I think it's very likely) they will probably get larger than normal convicts and be more aggressive.

This is a red devil x convict hybrid pulled from google. looks similar to me

 

[Aaron427]

Yeah your right that does look really similar so should I take them out of the tank and not breed them?

 

[Gourami Swami]

If you plan on giving the fry to other people, yeah I'd get a pure convict male. if you are going to just let the fry get eaten or use as feeders, then it doesn't really matter, the thing to avoid is distributing the hybrids

 

[Aaron427]

Here is another one of my cons

 

[Aaron427]

Sorry for double post but if I bred my hybrid with a pure convict picked a baby bred it back to another pure convict wouldn’t it give me pure fry on like the 3rd generation of breeding back to a pure convict?could I possibly pick the one that has the coloring I want and just keep breeding it back to another pure convict?