Female convict cichlid laid eggs.?

Question

My female convict almost killed my male convict during pregnancy.

I removed the male from the divider.

Female has been laying eggs inside a sinking boat and i have never seen the eggs.

Today i saw a fry on the other side of the divider below the filter.

How do i take care of the fry? The tank is high and if i feed tropical flakes fry won't be able to reach it?

Why only 1 fry? is it suppose to lay at least 30?

Answer 1

First Convicts are never actually pregnant  - they are gravid.

Use decapsulated brine shrimp or liquifry for feeding the fry.

Chances are there are more than one - fry are good at hiding.

Answer 2

You are probably not seeing any because they hide while they are young.  They only look like little black dots as  far as I've seen anyway.  And you won't see them eat either, they wait for it to fall into the grass or things they are hiding in.  You will also lose the babies if you don't separate them from the female, she will eat them as well as kill the male if he gets around the babies.

Answer 3

I just power up some flake food then put a pinch in a 1/2 cup aquarium water, let it liquefy then pour into aquarium. It sinks right away. I also feed freshly hatched brine shrimp.

Convicts usually are good parents and don't eat their young unless stressed. Once I didn't' know I had a new set of fry and started cleaning the tank. I moved a crock and found them and mama was upset attacking my hand. Next day all the fry were gone.

Both male and female protect the fry.

I think they mate for life.

Answer 4

Hey Jeffrey,

Well that will teach you not to under estimate a female when breeding lol.  Are you sure maybe that flowerhorn you're keeping might not have had a little something to do with it too? hint hint.  Well, you can always isolate the male to a seperate tank to treat him too, keep that in mind.

Fry for Convicts aren't all that much different then any other fry really.  Other then the parental care levels given by Convicts might be a little better.  You will probably find for the first couple weeks, you need smaller then normal foods for the adults.  Since these are Convicts, you don't really want to isolate them to their own tank.  I wouldn't use Infusoria in this case as this will probably just cloud up your tank more then it's worth.

Try using baby brine shrimp or de-capsulated brine shrimp.  You can also crush up the flakes for them into a very fine powder.  Flakes are going to sink to the lower levels so you don't have to worry about using flakes.  I just prefer to use the de-capsulated brine shrimp with my fry, since my mouth brooders have spawned more then once for me, and tend to yield some decent broods.  

No clue why you only yielded 1.  Keep in mind many first time spawns don't always produce large amounts of fry.  Convicts should yield you much more then 30 also.  Don't be surprised to start seeing counts well over 100.  Knowing this too though, make sure you have a solid plan to move them or you are at a high risk with only a 29 gallon tank of being very overpopulated with Convicts.

Jeffrey,

You never know with fish, I mean as soon as someone says this can't happen it does lol.  I'd say though, I wouldn't think a female would eat her own fry.  I think you might have had a group of unfertilized eggs maybe, or maybe some wandered up to the filter, maybe just most of the eggs this time went bad?  Could be alot of different reasons here, but if I were going to put money on the case, I wouldn't bet on a Female Convict eating her own.