Guys I need your advice. I'm planning to breed 3 to 4 pairs of convict cichlids at the same time in the same tank. The tank is about 100 g and cons would be 2 to 3 inches. I want to do this because I need a big batch of con babies to rise and later I will sell them to my LFS since the LFS guy is demanding more cons from me.
Convict Cichlid Breeding
- Thread starter Baloch
- Start date
4 pairs in a 100 gallon sounds tight or rather risky. Had a mature pair in a 40 gallon breeder along with a few others, and my 4" bull ended killing every other convict in the tank (except his mate).
The biggest issue I can foresee is territorial disputes, especially once they want to breed. Pairs might/will spawn at different rates, so there's that to consider.
Never spawned more than one pair at a time, let alone in the same tank. Hopefully someone with more insight will chime in.
Other than making sure there's enough hiding spaces (or divide the tank), stock up on bbs, fry starter, and microworms. Regular water changes as well.
The biggest issue I can foresee is territorial disputes, especially once they want to breed. Pairs might/will spawn at different rates, so there's that to consider.
Never spawned more than one pair at a time, let alone in the same tank. Hopefully someone with more insight will chime in.
Other than making sure there's enough hiding spaces (or divide the tank), stock up on bbs, fry starter, and microworms. Regular water changes as well.
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To be honest i have never tried to breed more than 1 pair in a single tank. In your case I guess the male was fully grown about 4" (as you said) . I'm going to use small size pairs ( 2" to 3") in a considerably big tank and I will remove the parents after the hatching.
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I recently had two pairs unexpectedly bred in a 39G. Their eggs were 4" apart. There was a lot of gill flairing and dancing but not much drama other than that.
Pulled the parents 2 weeks after the fry were free swimming.
Pulled the parents 2 weeks after the fry were free swimming.
I’ve had a 3 inch female convict cichlid for a month now and i bought a male about a week ago that’s a little bit smaller than the female. The male seems to puff himself up and swim around the female sometimes but then the female will chase him off and occasionally chase him around the tank. Will they breed with the female being a little bigger?
A few years previously I added a dozen 2" or so convicts to an established 180 with a few larger species of cichlid (a parent enjoyed my aquariums so got one but wanted to see fry in it). There were no casualties to the introduced convicts, they decided to spawn incredibly frequently and as a pp poster said in an aquarium of a larger size there wasn't an issue. With plenty of sites available the pairs spawned within 18" of each other. A large number of the fry didn't make it above an inch or so but that was with five 8-10" CAs, who benefitted from the addition.
I would only do (2) pairs in the tank from my experience. I had a breeding pair in my 150 with other large cichlids (Oscars, JD, Firemouth, Salvini, Parrot) and they beat the CRAP out of everything else in the tank. You could tell when they had eggs because they would have all the other tank mates cowering in the opposite corner of the tank
