XD Yah I know, in all seriousness they should be easy to breed. Guess I just got a rogue female that is a lot more aggressive than the usual. But anyways whilst I seek for bigger males, I'll just let it be. The majority of the harassing has gone, so will just let all the fish work it all out by themselves.
Inducing Convict to Breed
- Thread starter Azedenkae
- Start date
And... of course I had to turn away from this post to stare at the tank, only to find the three males all huddled in a corner lol.
I have multiple pairs of breeding convicts. The pairs that are successful, the male is overwhelmingly larger and is dominate. They spawn and raise the fry.
I have 1 pair in which the female is larger and more dominant. They spawn, as convicts do, eggs hatch and they'll raise them for ~10 days until 1 day I notice all the fry missing. This has happened at least 10x. The pair with the dominant female will canabalize their fry. This very same female had previously paired and spawned with a larger, dominant male and successfully raised fry.
I figured it must be this particular female eating her young without a dominant male around to protect them, so I paired that female with a larger, more dominant male (all my dominant males have huge nuchal humps). This resulted in fry which were successfully raised by the parents.
I have 1 pair in which the female is larger and more dominant. They spawn, as convicts do, eggs hatch and they'll raise them for ~10 days until 1 day I notice all the fry missing. This has happened at least 10x. The pair with the dominant female will canabalize their fry. This very same female had previously paired and spawned with a larger, dominant male and successfully raised fry.
I figured it must be this particular female eating her young without a dominant male around to protect them, so I paired that female with a larger, more dominant male (all my dominant males have huge nuchal humps). This resulted in fry which were successfully raised by the parents.
Hm... that's actually very interesting to know. I'll see if these current ones pair up, and whether that happens. Then I'll try a pair with a larger male and see what happens. It would be very interesting to confirm your observations!
By the way, one thing - how unlikely are americans to breed without flat surfaces to lay eggs on? I ask because I have lava rock, and the surfaces of those rocks are very rugged. Americans generally prefer smooth surfaces, don't they?
It doesn't really apply to convicts. I have them spawned in the caves which its not really flat surface.
In my girlfriends tank we have 1 larger male and 3 females .. it's a non stop breedin frenzy we don't have to do a thing they just find a flat surface and within days we have wigglers all over the place. It's getting to be too much at once a month or so, we're thinking of either setting the pair in a separate 40g breeder tank and just giving my LFS the fry, (because the pair is terrorizing her tank while protecting the wrigglers) or just removing the overprotective parents and send the dempsey on a happy feeding frenzy lol. We might wind up bringing back a few convicts to the LFS as well. It's just too much Lol
Convict cichlid is one of very few fish species that can get overpopulated pretty quickly in an aquarium without our help, other than feeding them. I've had five spawns from a pair already in just two months. Ended up feed most fry to mudminnows.
MY LFS has this 3-4 inch black convict I'm eyeing. I know hes a male pretty obvious so I want to hook him up with my ZZ female bonsai flowerhorn just so I can see the outcome. I want some balloon convicts lol
I'm looking for a pink convict but must be at least 3 inches but no cigar in my area. LFS have some at a smaller size but convicts grow slow and my female flowerhorn is growing fast.
