Can convicts changs sexes???

MIKE D said:
I know that both of my cons are female because they have both have had babies before. I would love to post pics but all I have is my cellphone and it cant take great pics. Now my Green terror has laid eggs. they are all white and are now covered in some white film. She has as of today made a pit behind the tree stump where she laid her eggs. I'm hoping they hatch because I would love to see what kind of fish they are.
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They are all white because they are dead. They most likely got attacked by fungus.
 
Nolapete said:
You can read into that and make it say whatever you want. Size is determined by sex or sex is determined by size. Until you study thousands upon thousands of the same fish, you can't make a sound determination. There's no proof in that showing that a female that has produced viable offspring will become a male when the male is removed and a smaller fish in introduced. Nor does it show that the same smaller fish which could be a proven male will turn into a female.

Convict cichlids DO NOT do the same thing that marine clownfish do in regard to changing sex.
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Convicts can change sex as well as a lot of other cichlids...I would tend to believe just about anything Liv2padl wrote. He was one of the most experienced cichlid keepers with over 50 years experience. The information was from Scientists and people of that caliber.
 
MIKE D said:
I know that both of my cons are female because they have both have had babies before. quote]

i would say that confirms gender.

of course if one has changed sex, i would love to follow the progress... keep us posted.
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they may have been guarding eggs together, but I don't believe that a female can fertilize them eggs. I'd have to see that myself to believe it.
 
i have had several females lay eggs together, but i have not ever actually observed a female "change" to a male or vis versa, and then pair and have live fries. (this doesn't just relate to convicts.) i have seen reports that males will take on the "appearance" of a female until it is mature enough to stand up and fight for his own mate.

(this is not to be confused as fact. no personal research or experiments have been preformed to study this behavior. just personal observations of my cons over the years)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3778/is_200301/ai_n9208650/pg_1 <--- great article to read.

True sex changes require that the female spawn successfully and raise fry (no other females in the tank) and then change to a male and breed with a female (no other males in the tank) who successfully raises fry. To be absolutely sure, no other but the pair should be in the tank at the same time. Otherwise sneaker males, that look like females, might be the actual father, not the supposed female-changed-male. -liv2padl
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I have no clue lol...
Besides that.. The cons in your picture... Are they wild caught? They are BEAUTIFUL!!!
 
You might find this useful - from The Cichlid Fishes, written by George Barlow:

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Blair.
 
It's a fantastic book, well worth the read.... From breeding my P taeniatus Dehane I have experimented with pH and temperature and have seen a noticeable impact on variations in those parameters. Another thing to remember is that a lot of females are killed during the early stages as they are smaller and somewhat less aggressive than the males, so often their being out competed by the larger, more aggressive males (and few females) can also skew final results.

I couldn't say that for all species, just the ones I have tried, even then thousands of duplicate tests would need to be made, but it is fairly consistent in Bolivians, German Rams, Pelvicachromis and herotilapia multispinosa (IME)...

Fascinating stuff in all.
 
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