Great information for those thinking of getting convicts . I've had convicts for over 25 years and have about 40 of them in my tank now . They are never boring ... Hardy fish indeed .
Thank you so much for the video it was very informative. I came home from work today and found that a pair of convicts had eggs in my 55 gallon. I just brought 6 a week & a half ago. I have 2 extra 20 gallon tanks sitting around but not setup. So for now I just put a divider in the 55 gallon shut off the hang on the back on that side..added 2 sponge filters. Your video helped me do all of this. Was not expecting this, but now I have a plan..again thank you.
Really enjoyed this! This person explained everything in detail and made the whole process sound rather simple! I was afraid to do this but now I am convinced that I can do it! I will buy some nice convicts and try to breathe them. I have a 50 gal tank to use for that purpose. I also have another 50 gal tank with different convicts but somehow I do not see any frys. Sichlids are such nice looking fishes and my experience is that they are hardy type of fish so I am hoping to start breathing and keep a closer eye and proper planning to get more cichlids in my tanks. I have one tank with only convicts and they are all doing well. I do understand that convicts should live by themselves since they are rather aggressive and do not get along with any other fishes.. Thanks again for a great video!
*Good info!* They're a smaller Cichlid that doesn't take up much space. They're very interesting to watch and except for the aggression at times, an easy Cichlid to keep. Just want to point out there are a number of Convict Color Varieties. There's the traditional Black & Gray variety, and also the Honduran red Point. There are several interesting aquarium color strains available as well, such as the Blue, Yellow, White, Pink, and marbled or Calico varieties. These are the only ones I'm aware of at this time. It's possible there maybe more?
I have one pair convict male and female but male chase female and try to bite her he is not staying with her and they are not mating once she had layed egg but male ate it and now male everytime chase her and he don't accept her
Great video. My question is My convicts , Honduran Reds, just breed before I got them 2 weeks ago, there dancing around now. Id like to vacuum tank once before the eggs, is that an issue , do you think it may cause to much stress for them? And after I separate them from their fry (3 weeks or so) can I put the adults in a 75 gallon tank with a Oscar thats 2 times there size ...4" Oscar?
Way back when I was a kid in the early 60's the dime store near me had a small set of tanks in the back where the owner sold a few fish. I believe the tanks were around 7and a half gallon ones. In one of those tanks he had a pair of black convicts and in another he had a pair with one black and one pink. He kept two one gallon jars that he would hatch brine shrimp in and feed the hatch to all his fish. He always had tanks of convict fry from his two pairs. He must have sold thousands of fry from those two mated pairs. I don't know if there's a better food for them than brine shrimp.
I got a question I want a cichlid community tank (don't worry the tank is gonna be huge) and I want 2 convicts in it ( I heard that convicts get depressed if they can't breed) so I still want them to do the "ritual" so they do what they were born to do but I don't want to end up with twelve billion of them if I just keep the tank mates in there with them will they eventually pick all of the babies off with the lights off? Or are convicts really THAT GOOD at parenting
The two convicts I have fought off a Jack Dempsey and Oscar that were bigger than them. The male convict actually terrorized them! I had to move them...even with hiding spaces.
Hi , sorry to ask i recently bought 2 male convits and today i bought a female they are in a 55 gallon with 2 silver dollar ,my question is are normal for the male to chase the female.. Also they about 2 inches
Hey WeaponX. Its pretty common in the pairing off stage, so common even that a lot of people use fins to determine male from female. In reality both male and females have the same fin shapes but the female's gets rounded out due to bullying while the males are able to grow a nice flowing edge (just a generalization). In your specific case however, I would think the aggressive behavior is more linked to the fact that you added in a new individual later than the two males which caused changes in the territory dynamic. Now they are trying to work it out through violence. Just keep an eye on it and intervene if it gets life threatening; otherwise it will work itself out eventually. Hope that helps!
Sorry to hear that; I am kind of impressed that it escalated that far in a 55 gallon tank. Were you able to save the female or is it still touch and go?
Whare about are you? Iv just got a female convict but there £6.50 each or pair for 12 bucks UK still going for good prices not to deer not exactly cheap either tho for feeders i know my puffers would like them but love the convicts id rather keep the fry too
Lol. Yes...back in the day, My convicts used to dig and make mounds, so bad, we had to redue the tank and take out the entire underground filter.. I miss them though...
Sounds about right, haha. I wish you could use memes on youtube because I would have to say "Underground filter; now that is a name I have not heard in a long time" :)
Lol. I know, it's funny to here people complain about cleaning a canister filter... I'm like "What! ...you have never lugged out buckets of fish and gravel to clean your filter plate???" Lol
Exactly!! But I have to say, for the work they did provide quite the bio-filter. Seems like after that the hobby went to pure mechanic filtration via HOB, then added the biological sponge to the HOB, and now we are all back to pure bio-logical filtration with new toys.
...yes, basically everyone I'm hearing on youtube is using sponge and Hob filters or sumps... but to be honest, I think, sometimes alot of these people in the hobby now can't appreciate how much easier things have gotten and how much easier it has become to have and maintain these large tanks. Back in the early 90's we were all still learning all this stuff. Now it's like a matter of status if you have a Fluval filter or a wet dry filter or RO water system. It's crazy when you get out for awhile and decide to just focus on a large tank of goldfish then get back into keeping tropical fish and listening to everyone talk about their filters and stuff and it makes it hard not to laugh.
would you say there is a certain length for when the convicts will start breeding? right now I have three that are about an inch in length. two are true females and the one with torn messed up fins is an undeveloped female or male. I'm thinking he's male. the females tend to chase him off so I'm scared they will try to kill him
Hello Victoria; length is a tricky measure as you can't be sure if it directly correlates to age. Some grow faster than others due to genetics, dominance, etc. When I was raising and selling my fry, one of the new owners sent me a video of the fry I sold him breeding at 8 months of age (the video is on my Instagram). So, assuming your fish are growing at an average rate for their species, I would assume they are just a bit too young. If you are worried about fighting, I would say buy a divider and separate them for the time being and reintroduce them at a later date. Additionally, this time of separation will make sure your targeted fish can get a decent amount of food and gain strength for future breeding attempts. Just my two cents; hope it helps!
A wonderful video. spectacular, a real pleasure to see you. My name is Alex, I have a Spanish-speaking aquarium channel and I would love to be able to put a piece of your video in a new project that I am going to do talking about reproductions, Of course your name would always be reflected in the video and also I would leave the link to your channel in the video description. I look forward to your response and it would be a real pleasure if you would give me your confirmation, anyway thank you very much for sharing this wonderful video
respect to y bro , tel me y female eat the fry about 2mm or 3 mm hardly . . i get a pair from some one . he give me about 15 fry n pair , but female eat them then i did Isolated them , n fry with male n almost safe
I got a couple females from a friend that moved. Then I saw an ad for a male. They got rid of the male because he was terrorizing a shark. So the couple killed the extra female. We got a bunch of fry, and fed the overabundance to my oscar. Then my original female died and we have had in breeding ever since. We have not had any new fry for a while, thank god! If we keep 5 to 6 fish we don't have breeding. But the oscar didn't eat all of them and ended up taking care of a few. That's my convict story.
Hey Damien, I assure you I didn't mean to "lie." As is often said on aquarium forums, your experience and my experience work together to paint a complete picture. What I probably should have better stated in the video is that it is not uncommon for defensive parents to wound or kill other fish. Convicts are known for being very aggressive as a species in general, so I was merely stating that stereotype but I do not deal in absolutes when discussing fish as individual specimens can have personalities that vary from the norm based on various factors. Clearly your tank is well set up, making you're convicts comfortable enough to have numerous tank-mates without exhibiting great aggression. Great job! To say that this is normal for most convicts to be this docile would be a bit misleading though in my experience. :) Hope that helps to clarify.
No worries, I understand the passion haha. I usually make my videos under the better safe then sorry method; so that the person who goes to add a fish to their aquarium does not come back here to blame me when it acts like the specimens that gave the species its reputation.
If they can tolerate a wide range of water conditions and there are going to be tons of offspring, would it be possible to just start putting the babies into a large outdoor pond?
As long as the temperature does not drop too low (55 degrees fahrenheit being a possible death sentence) and assuming low amounts of local pollutants, I think they could be an easy pond fish. Honestly, I think this species has the making to be one crazy invasive species if it were released in the right place.
What got me thinking that way was that in Australia they have a species of Cichlid called a Tilapia that's a massively invasive species and can live in almost any water condition, so I was wondering if maybe the Convict could be somewhere as close to as hardy, since it seems to tolerate a range of temperatures and water conditions and even looks like a similarly built fish, only smaller. I live in South Africa and the temperature stays pretty high except in peak winter, but it seldom gets any colder than 12-15 degrees Celsius even then. I was curious as to it's survivability in outdoor conditions. How cool would it be to have a pond full of Convicts? The babies have to go somewhere I guess.
Thank you for your commentary on how to breathe the cichlids. It was very simple. It was direct and you made it sound fun.
Great information for those thinking of getting convicts . I've had convicts for over 25 years and have about 40 of them in my tank now .
They are never boring ...
Hardy fish indeed .
Thank you so much for the video it was very informative. I came home from work today and found that a pair of convicts had eggs in my 55 gallon. I just brought 6 a week & a half ago. I have 2 extra 20 gallon tanks sitting around but not setup. So for now I just put a divider in the 55 gallon shut off the hang on the back on that side..added 2 sponge filters. Your video helped me do all of this. Was not expecting this, but now I have a plan..again thank you.
Really enjoyed this! This person explained everything in detail and made the whole process sound rather simple! I was afraid to do this but now I am convinced that I can do it! I will buy some nice convicts and try to breathe them. I have a 50 gal tank to use for that purpose. I also have another 50 gal tank with different convicts but somehow I do not see any frys. Sichlids are such nice looking fishes and my experience is that they are hardy type of fish so I am hoping to start breathing and keep a closer eye and proper planning to get more cichlids in my tanks. I have one tank with only convicts and they are all doing well. I do understand that convicts should live by themselves since they are rather aggressive and do not get along with any other fishes.. Thanks again for a great video!
new keeper of cichlid here and i find this video very helpful. thank you so much
Thanks for uploading. Hope you still have a passion for our hobby.
Great stuff! best video I have found on the infamous Black Convict Cichlid! thank you!
I got convict they are cute!one of my favourite
Bought one fry and now she’s grown up and has babies!!!!
Did you smoke before you shot this great video 🧐😂😂it’s Smokey in there😉
Great vid.. I'm interested in a breeding pair to have consistent, safe, live food for my American cichlid tank. This helps.
Still holds true
*Good info!* They're a smaller Cichlid that doesn't take up much space.
They're very interesting to watch and except for the aggression at
times, an easy Cichlid to keep. Just want to point out there are a
number of Convict Color Varieties. There's the traditional Black &
Gray variety, and also the Honduran red Point. There are several
interesting aquarium color strains available as well, such as the Blue,
Yellow, White, Pink, and marbled or Calico varieties. These are the
only ones I'm aware of at this time. It's possible there maybe more?
short body pink convict ones
Thanks a lot I usually don’t watch videos that long
What do you do with the fry. I have a ton of polar blue convicts and I don't know what to do with them
How many gallon tank on
Convent fish
How.long.does.it.take.for.them.to.get.bigger
Where can I buy convict cichlids and can they go with African cichlids?
Where in Central America are they from.. Central is a large place
Great video. Extremely helpful. From UK.
What size do they start breeding and their growth rate
About 2 inches they grow slowly
8 months
How do I stop aggression I’m trying to breed them but the female is aggressive
Is it okay to leave to fry with the parents until they are big enough to sell?
This is such a great video, thanks a lot
What if you only have one
That's why you have an Oscar, they'll eat the overabundance of fry.
I have one pair convict male and female but male chase female and try to bite her he is not staying with her and they are not mating once she had layed egg but male ate it and now male everytime chase her and he don't accept her
Great video. My question is My convicts , Honduran Reds, just breed before I got them 2 weeks ago, there dancing around now. Id like to vacuum tank once before the eggs, is that an issue , do you think it may cause to much stress for them? And after I separate them from their fry (3 weeks or so) can I put the adults in a 75 gallon tank with a Oscar thats 2 times there size ...4" Oscar?
Way back when I was a kid in the early 60's the dime store near me had a small set of tanks in the back where the owner sold a few fish. I believe the tanks were around 7and a half gallon ones. In one of those tanks he had a pair of black convicts and in another he had a pair with one black and one pink. He kept two one gallon jars that he would hatch brine shrimp in and feed the hatch to all his fish. He always had tanks of convict fry from his two pairs. He must have sold thousands of fry from those two mated pairs. I don't know if there's a better food for them than brine shrimp.
How big is the main tank
20g
Great explanation good job.
Question do convict breed on there own or do i have to do something
Anya Taylor-Joys If i have a young male and a female they Are going to breed, i don't have to do anything
I got a question I want a cichlid community tank (don't worry the tank is gonna be huge) and I want 2 convicts in it ( I heard that convicts get depressed if they can't breed) so I still want them to do the "ritual" so they do what they were born to do but I don't want to end up with twelve billion of them if I just keep the tank mates in there with them will they eventually pick all of the babies off with the lights off? Or are convicts really THAT GOOD at parenting
Mine just had babies 😁 this video helped a lot
The two convicts I have fought off a Jack Dempsey and Oscar that were bigger than them. The male convict actually terrorized them! I had to move them...even with hiding spaces.
Best info out there! Thanks!
Great video,my Pink convict male mated with the striped convict female today,how do you think the fry will look like when fully grown????
Geoffrey Jenkins same. They are the same, but different colors
I want to know how to look after the adult offsprings
"I have, I think, 93 fry in here".
Scarily specific
Lol
Bro you think I can get away with a pair in a 20 gallon long?
Can I have a convict cichlid with a juvenile turtle in a 26 gallon aquarium?
Only one male convict cichlid!
Hi , sorry to ask i recently bought 2 male convits and today i bought a female they are in a 55 gallon with 2 silver dollar ,my question is are normal for the male to chase the female.. Also they about 2 inches
Hey WeaponX. Its pretty common in the pairing off stage, so common even that a lot of people use fins to determine male from female. In reality both male and females have the same fin shapes but the female's gets rounded out due to bullying while the males are able to grow a nice flowing edge (just a generalization). In your specific case however, I would think the aggressive behavior is more linked to the fact that you added in a new individual later than the two males which caused changes in the territory dynamic. Now they are trying to work it out through violence. Just keep an eye on it and intervene if it gets life threatening; otherwise it will work itself out eventually. Hope that helps!
+Authentic Aquatics thanks ...I end up removing the aggressor becouse the female was swimming sideways and she lost her colors
Sorry to hear that; I am kind of impressed that it escalated that far in a 55 gallon tank. Were you able to save the female or is it still touch and go?
+Authentic Aquatics actually she's doing great ... I don't get he's ussually pretty cool with all my fish except the female ... don't know why ..
Your info is greatand
Whare about are you? Iv just got a female convict but there £6.50 each or pair for 12 bucks UK still going for good prices not to deer not exactly cheap either tho for feeders i know my puffers would like them but love the convicts id rather keep the fry too
I have my convicts with mollies and such been like that for at least 4 months now lol and they are a breeding pair
Very informative, thank you!
Do you sell any of your cichlids
great stuff man, thank you!
if they dig a lot; would you suggest using live potted plants instead of planting in subtrate?
Lol. Yes...back in the day, My convicts used to dig and make mounds, so bad, we had to redue the tank and take out the entire underground filter.. I miss them though...
Sounds about right, haha. I wish you could use memes on youtube because I would have to say "Underground filter; now that is a name I have not heard in a long time" :)
Lol. I know, it's funny to here people complain about cleaning a canister filter... I'm like "What! ...you have never lugged out buckets of fish and gravel to clean your filter plate???" Lol
Exactly!! But I have to say, for the work they did provide quite the bio-filter. Seems like after that the hobby went to pure mechanic filtration via HOB, then added the biological sponge to the HOB, and now we are all back to pure bio-logical filtration with new toys.
...yes, basically everyone I'm hearing on youtube is using sponge and Hob filters or sumps... but to be honest, I think, sometimes alot of these people in the hobby now can't appreciate how much easier things have gotten and how much easier it has become to have and maintain these large tanks. Back in the early 90's we were all still learning all this stuff. Now it's like a matter of status if you have a Fluval filter or a wet dry filter or RO water system. It's crazy when you get out for awhile and decide to just focus on a large tank of goldfish then get back into keeping tropical fish and listening to everyone talk about their filters and stuff and it makes it hard not to laugh.
great video, thank you.
Will my algae eater eat my convicts fry.
David Arnett No. The parents will kill him before he eats anyone
That's pretty accurate.
Great video brother
I didn't even have try to breed them they surprised me with babies .
fabulous thanks
My convicts are still wiggles
Yea I need lots of feeders ,
Can I have one
I'll give u 30
would you say there is a certain length for when the convicts will start breeding? right now I have three that are about an inch in length. two are true females and the one with torn messed up fins is an undeveloped female or male. I'm thinking he's male. the females tend to chase him off so I'm scared they will try to kill him
Hello Victoria; length is a tricky measure as you can't be sure if it directly correlates to age. Some grow faster than others due to genetics, dominance, etc. When I was raising and selling my fry, one of the new owners sent me a video of the fry I sold him breeding at 8 months of age (the video is on my Instagram). So, assuming your fish are growing at an average rate for their species, I would assume they are just a bit too young. If you are worried about fighting, I would say buy a divider and separate them for the time being and reintroduce them at a later date. Additionally, this time of separation will make sure your targeted fish can get a decent amount of food and gain strength for future breeding attempts. Just my two cents; hope it helps!
A wonderful video. spectacular, a real pleasure to see you. My name is Alex, I have a Spanish-speaking aquarium channel and I would love to be able to put a piece of your video in a new project that I am going to do talking about reproductions, Of course your name would always be reflected in the video and also I would leave the link to your channel in the video description. I look forward to your response and it would be a real pleasure if you would give me your confirmation, anyway thank you very much for sharing this wonderful video
I have mine in a 40 breeder
I'm currently breeding them to feed my baby alligator snappers hahah got frys atm about 100+ once they're almost 1" they will be fed
You look like you came out from the 70s with your hairstyle plus of the blurry camera
Lololololololololololplololololololo
So accurate
It's Great
Ocars is so big and need to give it always
Thanks 👌🏻
respect to y bro , tel me y female eat the fry about 2mm or 3 mm hardly . . i get a pair from some one . he give me about 15 fry n pair , but female eat them then i did Isolated them , n fry with male n almost safe
Pink seem more chilled
Awesome. T. Y
I got a couple females from a friend that moved. Then I saw an ad for a male. They got rid of the male because he was terrorizing a shark. So the couple killed the extra female. We got a bunch of fry, and fed the overabundance to my oscar. Then my original female died and we have had in breeding ever since. We have not had any new fry for a while, thank god! If we keep 5 to 6 fish we don't have breeding. But the oscar didn't eat all of them and ended up taking care of a few. That's my convict story.
maybe research your pet's needs. also most animals in nature can inbreed much more than humans can with no ill effects....
Convicts are natural interior designers.. see what they do with sand gravel.. they spit it out as they form their nest
I love these fish you put a bunch in a tank and add a gold fish it will be gone in a sec
Many good points, thanks for sharing. New sub. You might want to check out my new convict group!
Convicts are central American not south American
I’m pretty good at not dying also. Lol
your lying about how they kill anything smaller than themselves,I've got a pair with rainbows,guppys,angels,angels d corys and there completly docile
Hey Damien, I assure you I didn't mean to "lie." As is often said on aquarium forums, your experience and my experience work together to paint a complete picture. What I probably should have better stated in the video is that it is not uncommon for defensive parents to wound or kill other fish. Convicts are known for being very aggressive as a species in general, so I was merely stating that stereotype but I do not deal in absolutes when discussing fish as individual specimens can have personalities that vary from the norm based on various factors. Clearly your tank is well set up, making you're convicts comfortable enough to have numerous tank-mates without exhibiting great aggression. Great job! To say that this is normal for most convicts to be this docile would be a bit misleading though in my experience. :) Hope that helps to clarify.
sry if I sounded rude it's just I kinda get annoyed when people stereotype fish
No worries, I understand the passion haha. I usually make my videos under the better safe then sorry method; so that the person who goes to add a fish to their aquarium does not come back here to blame me when it acts like the specimens that gave the species its reputation.
They do try to attack all my smaller fish especial my smaller algie eaters
u seem cool dude, lets be friends.
check out my videos on my convicts...they are really amazing
You kinda remind me of nicolas cage lol
Common dude, get to the point... stop talking about stuff that don't matter.
sry for comment with out watching hahaha
nice
As soon as you mentioned feeder fish, that’s when I switched off. Bye bye.
If they can tolerate a wide range of water conditions and there are going to be tons of offspring, would it be possible to just start putting the babies into a large outdoor pond?
As long as the temperature does not drop too low (55 degrees fahrenheit being a possible death sentence) and assuming low amounts of local pollutants, I think they could be an easy pond fish. Honestly, I think this species has the making to be one crazy invasive species if it were released in the right place.
What got me thinking that way was that in Australia they have a species of Cichlid called a Tilapia that's a massively invasive species and can live in almost any water condition, so I was wondering if maybe the Convict could be somewhere as close to as hardy, since it seems to tolerate a range of temperatures and water conditions and even looks like a similarly built fish, only smaller. I live in South Africa and the temperature stays pretty high except in peak winter, but it seldom gets any colder than 12-15 degrees Celsius even then. I was curious as to it's survivability in outdoor conditions. How cool would it be to have a pond full of Convicts? The babies have to go somewhere I guess.
We have a texas cichlid and female convict that had fry.Do you suggestion we do anything different from your video?