Babies everywhere!!
I’ve mentioned our convict cichlids a few times. Here’s an update. We have one pair in a 10gal tank in the kitchen, along with their babies. We initially moved them because we were afraid that our Jack Dempsey might eat them. (It turns out, he’s terrified of the babies, too. That fish is afraid of everything, contrary to Jack Dempsey’s aggressive rep!! Can you say, “Neurotic Fish!”?)
The crazy mother fish has been moving gravel around in the tank. She now has about 4 inches of gravel stacked up at the front right corner of the tank. She rarely rests from this chore! The babies are swimming everywhere but don’t seem to be growing very quickly. One day, every baby in the tank was GONE. Gone gone. We looked in the floating plants, poked at the gravel, even checked the filter. GONE. We were so disappointed; we know that sometimes parents eat the fry but these were such GOOD parents. The next day, guess what? All the babes were back. We’ve got no earthly idea where they were hiding. Freaky! But happy.
I don’t know how often convicts breed… but I do know that the mother’s belly had gone back to gray, but today is a bright fiery red. Indicates she may be ready to lay eggs again.
In the main LR tank, three other pair laid eggs. One set of eggs was eaten - possibly because I had to get in and do a partial water change and it upset the parents. (Had no choice, at the end of a tetracycline treatment). The other two sets have hatched. One set is very large now, the other is still quite tiny and looks more like wriggly mud than baby fish!!
We really aren’t sure what we’re going to DO with all of these babies… between the three sets we’ve probably got 100-200 fish! Perhaps we can sell them to a local fish store? But I read somewhere that they need to be at least 3cm before they go, which is actually quite large compared to where they’re at today!
February 26th, 2008 at 5:27 am
You’ve got the fishes part right, now go for the loaves bit…