New to breeding Convicts!

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Moloch;4596391; said:
The biggest worry for me right now is the female being WAY over-dominant. She forces the male to stay in the top-back corner of the tank. I'm not sure if he's even getting food to be honest:irked: I can't move him to my other tank, I have two ready-to-breed females in that tank, its overstocked as it is & I can't afford to risk getting 1 or even 2 hostile pairs of convicts out of it:\ Hopefully he makes it through.
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I've had that happen in reverse a few times, with the male beating up on the female. One trick I found was to take the agressive one out for 10+ minutes. Let the one that is getting picked on get back into the groove of parenting without the bully around. Don't need another aquarium or anything, just drop her in a gallon jar or something. Won't be there long enough to hurt anything.

The 3 times I've done it, when I put the male back in, they re-do their little mating dance and then start getting along again. Haven't lost any fry yet, though I hear this could potentially happen. If you take the female out, watch the male with the fry. If he starts attacking them, you'll have to remove him long term.
 
^ thanks I might try that tonight if I get a chance...having people over.
 
Well I'm not sure what happened but I came home the other day and now the male is staying in the middle of all the fry and the female is hovering on the other side of the tank. Occasionally they'll ram each other (can never tell who actually instigates) but for the most part she's being completely stand-off now. I'm pretty sure I've seen him eat a few fry though I can't be sure.

Not sure why the switch happend...
 
Moloch;4608129; said:
Well I'm not sure what happened but I came home the other day and now the male is staying in the middle of all the fry and the female is hovering on the other side of the tank. Occasionally they'll ram each other (can never tell who actually instigates) but for the most part she's being completely stand-off now. I'm pretty sure I've seen him eat a few fry though I can't be sure.

Not sure why the switch happend...
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let her raise the babies...
 
I'm pretty much letting them do as they please...
 
They will grab the fry in their mouths and move them. Sometimes hard to tell if they spit them back out or not. If he was aggro on the fry though, he'd be snapping them all up and not defending them from the female.

Same trick should still work if the female starts getting beat up too bad and you want them to get along again. Just take out the male this time.
 
Yeah...originally the female was the watchdog, the male was getting battered into the corner. I took out the female for about 30 minutes, the male never came out of hiding in that time period. When I put her back in things were straight back to normal...he was getting attacked, she was overbearing on the entire tank.

Out of the blue (days, even a week after that) the male is all of a sudden a little more out & about, the female is on the other half of the tank. She's still attacking him a bit but he stands his ground. By the end of that day or into the next day she's staying on her new half of the tank and he's swimming amongst the fry. They aren't terribly hostile towards eachother anymore, both fish are now showing nice bold colors, although she does seem a bit bothered about being away from the fry.

I watched him take one fry up & waited a few minutes in front of the tank to see if he'd spit it back out..never saw it happen, but I'm still not certain. Its like he just snacks on em occasionally, OR he just holds them a LOT longer than she ever does/did.

I'm baffled by it. It'll be interesting to see what they do on the next spawn. If it goes the same way again, at least this time I'll have a new 40gal set up that either convict can easily sit in for a while :)
 
Moloch;4608661; said:
Yeah...originally the female was the watchdog, the male was getting battered into the corner. I took out the female for about 30 minutes, the male never came out of hiding in that time period. When I put her back in things were straight back to normal...he was getting attacked, she was overbearing on the entire tank.

Out of the blue (days, even a week after that) the male is all of a sudden a little more out & about, the female is on the other half of the tank. She's still attacking him a bit but he stands his ground. By the end of that day or into the next day she's staying on her new half of the tank and he's swimming amongst the fry. They aren't terribly hostile towards eachother anymore, both fish are now showing nice bold colors, although she does seem a bit bothered about being away from the fry.

I watched him take one fry up & waited a few minutes in front of the tank to see if he'd spit it back out..never saw it happen, but I'm still not certain. Its like he just snacks on em occasionally, OR he just holds them a LOT longer than she ever does/did.

I'm baffled by it. It'll be interesting to see what they do on the next spawn. If it goes the same way again, at least this time I'll have a new 40gal set up that either convict can easily sit in for a while :)
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i did not know this but they are cleaning them when they pick them up with there mouths... :)
 
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