How long did it take for your Convicts to Breed

[Forum221]

I got two Black Convicts from my LFS on Sunday and from what I have read, I think I have a male and female. One is a little larger with less distinct stripes and the other has more distinct stripes with an orange belly. So I think the one with the Orange belly is the female (1") and the one without the orange is the male(1.5"). I have them in a 20l by themselves with a Penguin 170. They have two flowerpots, some carved rainbow rock and a few fake plants covering the enterence of the caves(pots). And as of this morning, no babies. My water is about 77ish degrees. I was just wondering how long it took your guys to make babies and if I am doing anything wrong.

[AikidoGuy]

your tank sounds fine. mine breed every two weeks! i move them from tank to tank very often and it still doesnt affect them they pick a spot and lay the eggs. they are probably able to breed in a puddle of antifreeze in your driveway! give them some time and youll have more convict fry then you can handle :p

[demon_surfer]

are they maybe a bit small to breed? only 1 inch and 1.5. i admit i dont know jack about convicts but most fish need to be a bit bigger to start breeding dont they?.

Are you able to *choose* who the convicts will breed with?? i know with mbuna and angelfish and the like if you just by one male and female then the chances of them pairing up are slim to none.

[AikidoGuy]

if you have a male and a female your good to go they arent picky about parnters, hmm the size 1.5" should be large enough, they breed pretty young. just give them some time. the female will color up ALOT when shes ready to breed and one day youll see her color is alot less or even gone, look for eggs that day.

[latazyo]

mine bred in a gross 10g tank with cyano and ich

it took mine about 2 weeks after I bought them to breed though

they were about the size of yours

[fish dude]

theyre old enough mine bred at 1 inch couldnt get them to stop

[Forum221]

Just got home today and still no eggs. I'm hoping I have a male and female. Does it dound like do by the colors? The bigger one (male) is chasing around the smaller one alot. I think I read that this is what they do before they mate, is this right? Also for the fry, I think I will let the stay in the parents tank for a week or two then when they get a little bigger, take out half and put them into a 10 gallon tank. Does this sound ok?

[Forum221]

Now my male is constintly chasing around the female whenever he can find her, she will hide in one of the corners behind a heater. Is this ok?

[Oscar_Wild]

I've had female cons spawn at 3/4" so yours is big enough. I would bump the temp of the tank to 80* and feed them some brine shrimp. You should get your Jack Dempseys pretty soon, cause you are gonna start using all of your con fry as feeders.


Oscar Wild

[Thunder]

My convicts bred after a couple of weeks. When they were first introduced, the male chased the female away for a week. Then they began to bob their heads at each other and wrap around each other. Soon enough, my female went into hiding in a little vase decoration and I soon had babies. They don't take long at all.

[Tightdog1]

my litle brothers convicts bred at about 1.5", about a 2 months after he bought themm from the store.

[Forum221]

Almost two weeks now and still no babies. Does it sound like I have both a male and a female. The bigger one has no orange on his stomach (almost pink color). And the smaller one has an orange stomach. It has been orange ever since I got it. They are both eating pellets, flakes and blackworms. Sound like a pair?

[Ronne]

The easiest way to sex convicts is to look at the fins and not the stomach color, stomach colors will change as the female develops eggs.

Males have a longer dorsal fin that extends further towards the tail, females have a shorter dorsal fin that ends well before the tail. Try and post some pics and we could tell you the sexes very easily or you can do a search on Google for "Convict Cichlid Breeding". Lots of websites with good pics.

[AikidoGuy]

i disagree on the longer fins being best. A female in good health can have fins just as long as the male. the male wont have the orange and the female always will..

[votek]

I just switched my cichilid tank to a saltwater tank (10g).

But I used to have a breeding pair just like yours. I played around a little to see how their behavior was influenced.

-If you re-arange their tank, ie- doing a gravel vac or moving rocks around, it GREATLY halts their breeding. They can take up to 2 weeks or more to get "in the mood" again. At least that is how it was for mine.

-If you introduce 1 little feeder fish of some kind, it can excite thier behavior, make them more territorrial, and thus MIGHT* increase the rate at which they breed. I found that when I introduced a feeder, it kicked up their breeding rate.

But when I had near 75 cichilids growing to adolesent size (1/2 inch) - all living in a 10 gal. tank I had to get rid of them. I would usualy just take them up to a couple of the huge aquarium bins they have up at the Local PetCo.

I just got tired of making the trips, and having more then 2 in a 10g gets rough on them.

[Forum221]

Hey,
I will try to have pic's posted asap so you guys can help me sex them. Hopefully before Sunday.

[Verse914]

whats the smallest size tank I could put a breeding pair of convicts? The lfs has about ten 3 1/2-4" convicts that I was interested in breeding if I had the room.

[Forum221]

I would say the smallest tank is like a 20l. But back to my problem, when I checked out my fish this morning, i realized that the female was missing a huge part of her tail, it wasnt just the fin part, some meat was missing too. I figured the male turned canibalistic and attacked her because I don't think my pleco did this. I immediatly took her out and moved her into a 10 gallon tank, tomarrow I think I will add salt to help her a little. The question remain, what to do? If the female gets better should I put her back? I think my problem was the male was too big for the female, the male seems to be growing very fast because he is about 2" now and the girl hasn't grown at all. What to do?

[o snap its eric]

lets see.... my cons bred in the first month i got them. m was about 1.5-2" and f was about the same size. they bred perfectly int 10g. killed everything else in the tank though. i would put back the female once its healed. male cons tend to pick on the females as most cichlids do when breeding.

[Forum221]

Do you know how long it willtake for her tail to heal? Almost all of it is missing.

[Weasel6]

Started out with 2 black stripped convicts.No dice.He chased her until no tomorrow. Traded the female in for a pink one. Bingo! The male would chase her but not bad, kinda like courting. She took up residence inside a cave and came out only to eat. This was after a couple days. Next thing I saw was a hole dug out in the gravel between a piece of slate and the cave. She still hung out in the cave. When she came out, he went in and stayed until she returned. About a week later I saw appx. 7 "wigglers" attached to the lip of the cave. Few days later still I was surprised to see a knot of "gnats" floating and wiggling about next to the cave. Definately more than 7, more like 50 or better. Each day she takes them out for a swim further and longer each day and hovers over them constantly with help from Pa.
I'd say from the Pink one going in to wigglers was about 2-3 weeks at best. Mine are in a 10 gal. and they both are about 1.5" to 2" in size. The male's dorsal and anal fins are defin. longer and flowing. Hers are shorter but the females will get the reddish or orangeish belly and flanks.
If in doubt trade one or both back in. When they hook up you'll know.
BTW. When you do get fry, don't forget to put some screen or equiv. on your filter intake tube. Saw one of mine get sucked up the other day. Glad the wife didn't see it.

[Forum221]

I think im going to head back to the LFS and try to find a bigger female to throw in with my male. Over my filter intake I have a AC150 foam media so the fry dosn't get sucked up.

[MZCHICKEN]

Hi everyone... this is my first day here!!

I wantes to reply to the lady here with the convicts.. .. I have convicts and jacks that i aquired a month ago.. We were doing the same thing you were... wondering when the babies were comming... After reading some sites we discovered that out water temp was a liitle low... so we bought heaters and set the convicts and jacks tanks to 82- 84 degrees... its been a week and yesterday we discovered that we have convict frys about 40-50 of them and the same day we saw about 300-400 jack dempsey frys.... this morning there are even more of the jacks.... they are under rocks .. on the side of the tack where they blew all the gravel... my fiancee and i are sitting here now trying to figure out what to do with them and where to buy more tanks

[Forum221]

Hey,
Thanks for the reply but I am not a girl. I think that I will just get one more convict to go with my male, and when I add her, I will turn up the temp.