Ideas for a 22g convict tank

[aliaz666]

Hi everyone, just wondering, i'm giving my dad my 22g tank with my male convict (3inches) and as it's his first real fish tank he wants to set it up nicely with a couple of plants & maybe a girlfriend. He also wanted to put a few silver sharks or something like that (small ones, really small) and some sort of pleco.
It is only a small tank but i've bred the convicts parents in there a couple of years ago & they were quite a bit larger than him so i thought it would be ok as long as i don't go too crazy. Anyway just asking for a few suggestions as to plants and tankmates.. Thanks

 

[JeffLeMay]

22 gallons is really too small, in my opinion, for even one convict, let alone tankmates. silver sharks can get rather large, so even if they are small to start it's not going to work. same with most plecos. the plan just doesn't sound well thought out. just my opinion

 

[Natalie]

In my experience, it's been really tough to have a convict pair in that size tank that tolerate each other. It looks like you've done it before so it may work, but someone may get hurt. If you keep just one male, he could grow into a really good looking fish with nice long streamers on his fins. Plants sound good, but beware that convicts and most cichlids will chew on a lot of plants. Anubias species seem to work well as they aren't very palatable to cichlids. Rather than silver sharks, how about adding a school of smaller fish such as rosy barbs to your tank? My male convict has never tolerated plecos in his tank (a 30 gallon). There's something about convicts and plecos-- they have never mixed well in the past for me. The convict ends up badgering the pleco until it either gets seriously injured or I have to remove it due to stress. If it were me I'd avoid adding a pleco.

Good luck and let us know how it goes

 

[thezombiesarecoming]

In my experience, it's been really tough to have a convict pair in that size tank that tolerate each other. It looks like you've done it before so it may work, but someone may get hurt. If you keep just one male, he could grow into a really good looking fish with nice long streamers on his fins.

i'm actually in the same boat right now. i've got a male convict in a 20-ish gal by himself at the moment. i was planning on getting a ladyfriend for him, cuz i had read that a pair of convicts would do well in a 20 gal...? is what i read wrong then??

 

[n0zqh]

I've never had luck with convicts in anything smaller then a 29g A 20 may have the same foot-print but a 29 has been the smallest I've had luck with. In that 29 nothing else survived but a bushy nosed pleco, though I did have a common pleco in for a while, they create so much waste it was hard to keep the tank clean.