Convict cichlid - elongated, deformed or just an abnormal growth spurt?

[Jakob]

I have a few juvenile convict cichlids I picked up a few weeks ago, they were all (about 20) cramped in a 20 gallon tank, so a few of them had bad gill curl.
But one of the convicts is unusually elongated. Some fish start growing in length and then girth later on, and sometimes look a little funny for a while.

Is he deformed, or just having a growth spurt?

One of my normal looking cons, for comparison:

And here is the elongated one:

Btw.. how do you think he looks?

 

[rmkblades]

looks like a blood parrot poked his momma

 

[DMD123]

Was it yawning while taking the photo? If not it looks like it has a deformity with its mouth, almost reminds me of a blood parrot. I see it too has the gill curl issue.

 

[Jakob]

The convicts on the pictures above are siblings, so there is no blood parrot, he is 100% convict. And yes he is yawning, nothing wrong with him except for the gill curl and the elongation.

 

[rmkblades]

LoL, it was a joke! looks like he has a deformed spine. It happens.

 

[Jakob]

Anyone else?

 

[rmkblades]

Deformities happen....For example, here are two of my gold Jack Demspeys. One has a normal looking body and the other has an arched back (deformed). Could be from inbreeding, but it is basically a mutation. Some people look for these body morphs and try to breed for them. An example would be to find another convict with a similar body morph as yours and breed them. Chances are you would have some of the fry showing similar body morphs as the parents. Some would be completely normal and some could potentially be even more noticeably extended. You keep breeding the longest ones till you create a strain of long bodied convicts. Again, if that is what you want. Also, to answer your original question, a growth spurt doesn't usually affect only one part of the fish. The fish will grow larger as a whole, except unless we are talking about it's fins getting longer or a kok growing larger. Either way, here are my JDs. One normal and the other with a deformed back. NOTE - (The first pic is of my JD and Jewel...the Jewel looks more like my undeformed JD than my deformed JD does)