It has been a week to the day since I bought a pair of cons to breed and the male badly beat the female up in the bag on the way home. The female is looking great and shows amazing progress daily, I can almost not even tell where she was missing scales! Soon (a day or 2) she should be ready to go back in with the male again. Right now they are in a 20H with a divider between them. Does anyone have any advise on how to introduce them to prevent a reoccurrence? (the male did not stop picking on the female after I put them in the 20 last time but she was already wounded and maybe that was just instinct at that point.)
Introducing male/female cons.
- Thread starter Diamondhitch
- Start date
If you were going to be home for a while, I'd just pull the divider and keep an eye on them. If there is enough of a difference in size you could try a partial divider though.
The most common way to do it is have a hole in the divider only big enough for the female to get in and out. Its most commonly used for introducing Red Devils and other larger aggressive cichlids.
the few times i've kept em seperated with a divider, you could just tell through the change in behaviour. they'd go from one constantly trying to get through to the other, to both digging adjoining pits and completely at ease.
whenever there seems to be a calm, as mentioned above remove the divider and observe. good luck
whenever there seems to be a calm, as mentioned above remove the divider and observe. good luck
i had that same problem.what i did was put the female in here own tank for a few days and then added the male.the male was still agrresive towards her but ended up breeding later on that day.just make sure the male doesnt see the female for a few days and it should work out.when they do breed,my best advice is seperate them because it might get worser than what u lookin at now.gl with the cons
Don't worry about pulling the divider. Just situate the pot next to the divider and the male will breed right through it. If they were in a larger tank, you wouldn't have that problem. The 20H is big enough...but smaller bodies of water bring out more aggressive territorial behaviour.
i would try putting a divider into the tank...and then slowly try introducing them since convicts are small you could probably just let them in the tank alone and just put alot of barriers in the tank like caves and plants so that the male or female can run if they have to..that would probably be the easiest and nice thng to do..
Good advise, she went through to his side. The male displayed for about 20 seconds or so then attacked her extremely viciously! She retreated back to her side and he spent several minutes taking runs at the hole in the divider trying to get to her! I dont know if he is just extremely agressive or what. I think he is going back to the store and I will try again with another male (preferably a smaller one!) Actualy I think they have a mated pair of pink cons there now anyway so maybe I will trade for them instead.
An aggressive male isn't always a bad thing though. I went through 3 females before I got a good pair with my male. Now they have 2 sets of fry and already laid another set of eggs. I think the eggs didn't get fertilized or the male or female ate the fry. Anyways keep trying. 20 gallons might be too small for a pair however.
I have simply taken out my Male and changed around the tank, then reintroduced him with her at the same time and usually he just shows her he is the dominant fish. Then they start breeding!