breeding convicts

[rollie]

Convict Cichlid
How to spawn them

Well, you need a pair, a tank with water in it and you got babys. it just that easy!

Okay, you get a pair, the female will be redder on the belly. the male top fin will be more pointed than the female.

I recommed at least a 20 gallon tank, but smaller will work.

Put some large rocks, in the tank and put your fish in. I also recommed you used what is called a baby saver filter. the power filter will suck, them up, and may killed them.

Now within 1 to 4 days or there about, they will lays eggs. The eggs might or might not be hidden from sight.

The eggs will hatch, in 1 or 2 days. Now you will need a special baby fish food, for the frys to eat.

In the few days, you will be able to feed them live brine shrimps. If you do this they will grow quite fast.

When the babys get to about 2 to 3 weeks old, you might want to take the mommy and daddy out. Because they will be ready to spawn again!

Concict make good parnets. They will take good care of their youngs, usually.

If you put your hand in the tank, while they got youngs, they will attacked your hand.

This is just a brief summary, on how i spawn convict!!

Oh yes, why not give the convict their own place, and put this on the top of the page, william. just an idea.

[FINWHIPPED]

I followed this "recipe" and it worked. After three weeks I moved the fry to their own tank and they are doing well. Within a week I saw thhe female stayed in her cave and sure there were eggs again. Four days later, babies. And then the problem, they were all gone. In the morning they were around the cave and when I got home from work, they were gone. WHY?? would the parents eat them? I've done a 25% water change two days prior. Was that the trigger???

[Fishguy2727]

For the filter, you can just rubberband a Bio-bag over the intake and that will protect the babies. It is cheap and you still get the same filtration you have had. They don't need special food. While mine were with the parents I didn't feed anything special, so the parents must have been chewing it up for them. If they are by themselves you can just feed Hikari Guppy Food, it is a very small pellet, more like a powder. Then as they get a little bigger you can crush up TetraMin Pro Crisps, then you don't need to crush them, then you move up to Hikari Cichlid Gold Baby.

[FINWHIPPED]

After the first batch of fry were removed I changed the filter to a sponge filter, as I was told the babies would pick food off the filter and there is no danger of them becoming filterfood. Maybe the filtration rate was too low and something (water condition wise) went wrong.

[Fishguy2727]

If you switched filters and the new one wasn't matured with at least the same size bioload, you may have had huge spikes of ammonia or nitrites. Like I said, just stick a Bio-bag over the intake to the main filter and they will be fine.

[girlfish]

What is a bio bag and where can I get one and about how much are they.

[Abbeys_Mom]

No wonder they sell convicts at my lfs for 99 cents.

[Fishguy2727]

Bio-bag is just the mechanical part of the filter cartridge for a whisper power filter. It should not be more than a dollar or two. The preassembled ones are already put together, so some of the carbon may get stuck. If you think you may be using it more often, you can get a 4 pack of the medium sized ones. It will come with 4 bio bags, 4 pouches of carbon, and one frame. You will only need the bio bags.