From my own experience with convicts the male gets much bigger than the female, so if you want small go with the females, the max about 4.5" . Also this setup will keep you from having babies ever week too.
craziness
- Thread starter psychadelicdrea
- Start date
yeah its amazing where you can find your "escaped" fish.... when i was little i had a ten gal that one of my glowlight tetras jumped out of... it was a room shared by me and my and my brother. I didnt find the body until a year later 
psychadelicdrea said:
If the stores are telling you that they feed only brine shrimp they are either lying to you or have a ton of money to throw away.
Being in the fish retail business I can tell you that everyone I speak to or deal with including suppliers on a weekly basis use a bulk brand of flake and or pellet. Very few use anything else. If they do it is as a supplement for more specialty fish. IE Discus. Even then the bigger farms won't spend the extra money.
The local little independant supplier that does it out of his home may but then end up charging far more for the fish then the big guys. which in turn means the store has to raise their prices. When I use to sell NW cichlids ( severums, dempsey's rainbow cichlids, acaras, etc...) to some of the local stores I had a set agreement on the price per unit that they would give me. If I decided to go with more expensive food it would have just been taking money out of my pocket, because my unit price was set. Spending more on my end didn't mean more coming in from theirs.
I never suggested live foods for your fish. I was just explaining the nutrition value of brine and how it changes as they get older.
You would never be able to feed any large cichlid baby brine live or dead. They are smaller than a pinhead. The bigger fish would have a very hard time trying to eat them. Not to mention the mess that would come from the amount that you would have to put in the tank to properly feed the fish.
One more thing about cichlids. It is always better to have a variety of foods to give them throughout the week. Sticking with only one or two foods is not the best for big predatory fish. By supplying them a variety you are sure that they will recieve the most complete diet possible assuring maxamum growth as well as excellent coloring and life span.
well i can understand once they get bigger the brine shrimp wont do nothing for them.......right now their still small so the brine isnt to small....but i have been looking for some outher food...cause the gt is always excited when i walk buy the tank like hes beggin.....and my red terror seems like hes not growing as much......
I just thought i would say i agree with ScottoMacD, and i reccommend his advice be taken 
Brine is a good treat but by no means should be used as a staple food. This is frozen brine shrimp we are talking about? That will make much more of a mess in your tank than flake food would.
Brine is a good treat but by no means should be used as a staple food. This is frozen brine shrimp we are talking about? That will make much more of a mess in your tank than flake food would.
well i did...i bought some spirnulla formula its frozen alge-based and some bio-blend color enhancing wafers....but i found that their a lil small for them tho...but they stil eat it....the alge-spirulla is weird tho..a gel like stuff......and i got some good news on a 150 gallon tank with 2 filters and ligts and hood and stand...for 400 good deal huh
scratch the 150 i'm getting a 125 gallon....its a lil bit smaller and i belive its much longer then it is high...im not sure.....and im also gonna get either like 2 emporer 400's for it or a magum 350 caninster and a emp 400....i surely hope thats gonna be enough filtration for it...now i should have a large enough tank for you all..lol...now all i gotta do is figure out what goes in what.....id like to be able to get an oscar...but i got a gt and a rt and to blue dempesys....so hopefully maybe one of those will be compatiable
