Tank Size and Growth Rate

[popcorn1]

SHORT VERSION

3 Convict fry in a breeder cage inside a 10 gallon tank. 1 Convict fry not in the breeder tank swimming in the same 10 gallon tank.

The 3 Convicts share a Hikari pellet a day. The other Convict eats free falling Hikari crumbs for my Cherry shrimp and spends most of its time hiding.

The single Convict is considerably larger than the other 3 despite sharing the same water and probably eating less than the 3.

Why?

LONG VERSION

I had 4 Convict fry in a 10 gallon tank. I decided to quarantine them to prevent the loss of my Cherry shrimp fry.

I managed to catch 3 of them and put them in a breeder cage in the same tank they were in, meaning, theyre inside a cage inside the tank they were/are still in. The last Convict fry got away and I gave up trying to get it. Today I finally caught it and put it in the cage along with the other 3.

I noticed it was much larger than the other 3. The water quality is the same because the cage and the tank share the same water. The 3 Convicts actually ate pretty good. They had full bites of Hikari pellet a day.

The other Convict probably only got the Hikari crumbs that I crushed for my Cherry shrimp and whatever else it managed to get while hiding in the moss.

So what made the Convict grow so much bigger than the other 3?

 

[Fat Homer]

This is pure guess work on my part, but maybe its due to eating the baby RCS shrimp??? or maybe the water quality isn't exactly the same between the tanks??? i mean not to sound rude, but did you actually test both tanks water to see if the parameters were exactly the same???

 

[bubbles123]

The net was inside the other tank, all the fish shared the same water, just the net separated them, right?

2 thoughts :
1 - the cherry shrimp food is especially good for growth for cichlids.
2 - the one that you couldn't catch and then gave up trying to catch and is now so much bigger than the rest; my guess is, the reason you couldn't catch him, he was probably the biggest/fastest one then too, maybe not noticible then. I bought 6 convict fry from an lfs a few months ago. 1 had a growth spurt right away, by the end of the first week he was noticable bigger than the rest. Now he is almost triple the size of the smallest one from the same batch, and he is still the biggest of them all.

 

[popcorn1]

Yes, they share the same water. Only the net/breeder cage was separating them.

They were also eating the same food. Whatever my Shrimp get, the Convicts get. The 3 Convicts were kind of overfed IMO.

Could it just be due to the single Convict feeling like he was the king of his area so he grew faster?