Summary:
We discovered that we had a breeding pair of convicts when we found about 100 teeny babies hovering around an opening in our stump of driftwood. A week later, there were at least 30 (I don't know whether some died, or whether they just looked more numerous when they were smaller - or both) babies, probably more. They were just little sprinkles, with a tail and a big pink stomach. They looked cross-eyed and very cute, because the skin in front of their head was transparent still (which made their eyes look bigger). I wasn't sure what we were going to do with the fry, because the local pet shops are typically overstocked with convicts, but it was a neat experience - once. I tried to persuade Mike into keeping just two convicts of the same gender and giving the rest away, so that we can enjoy the convicts without having to enjoy ten thousand of them - but the problem remains that I think the females are more attractive, and he favors the male. So as long as we remain stubborn, they will remain in the tank, producing live fish food every 6 weeks. Sigh!! They have produced 2 batches of living babies since then, but they have all been eaten within about 10 days of being free-swimming.

Warning:
For those of you out there who are thinking of breeding convicts because people say it's easy, I say: Think about it - if they're so easy to breed, that implies that a lot of other people are doing it, which means that there are already more than enough convicts in the world. Try something else - many other cichlids (and other kinds of fish) spawn easily, and are much more desirable to pet shops and other people than convicts. Convicts are great fish - they're hardy, pretty, they don't get too big (well, maybe 4-5" or so), and they're very active and spunky. However, breeding small populations of convicts is (in my mind) as irresponsible as breeding cats or dogs, in this area.. We can't even give them away at our fish club meetings, and none of the stores will take them. Given that, here's...

Our Convict Tale:

(11/30/95)
We first noticed the swarm of babies hovering outside of a hole in our driftwood! I immediately started growing my first batch of brine shrimp.. it may be my last :). Lots of the shrimp hatched, and the baby convicts eat a whole lot of the egg/shrimp mixture I squirt into the babies' general area every evening, but I found it extremely difficult to separate the eggs from the shrimp - I heard that they swim toward light, so you should be able to shine a light in the bottom of the container, and then skim the eggs off the top, but I found that although some of them swarmed around a light, that there were so many shrimp mixed in with the egg shells that.. I'd be tossing away a lot of shrimp. The main reason I don't like raising brine shrimp though, is that I find it upsetting that I have to kill so many shrimp in the process of raising them and feeding them. Although they are just barely microscopic, my soft spot for animal life is too large for this sort of thing, and I find myself shining a flashlight into this puddle and that, dropper in hand, looking for that one stray shrimp, desperately throbing its way to nowhere... Even if the process of raising them didn't kill a certain percent, being introduced to freshwater suddenly and dying from osmotic imbalance can't be a fun way to go, either. Ideally, they would live quietly until the moment they were eaten, but alas, their life in this house is a very cruel one, from the start to the finish.

Next, I think I will try growing Daphnia, because according to the alt.aquaria FAQ on live food, it seems pretty ideal. Unfortunately, when I asked the staff at the local pet shop if they had a source for live daphnia or eggs, the answer was a resounding, "duuuh... err.. huh? We have freeze dried ones!". So, if you know of a mail order source for these critters, or if you'd like to send me some, please write to me.

(12/13/95)
The convict babies are now about a centimeter long, and I can see their eyes.. they actually look flat today (taller than they are wide), instead of like little sausages. There seem to be slightly fewer of them now, maybe about 20. I think their parents are having an increasingly difficult time herding them around - the babies tend to wander a lot now. Soon, I think I will move just the babies to another tank. I was hoping to keep them with their parents, but I suppose being separated from your parents is better than being dead. :-)

(1/17/96)
We just returned from a 3 week long trip to England, and have found that we only have five survivors from the original 15 who were in the tank when we left. I attribute this to... magic, the temperature of the tank (it was only 68 degrees F or so, for some reason), the fact that they weren't fed all that much, and more magic. One of the five is a "mutant" - it has one eye that's significantly bigger than the other, and doesn't swim quite straight. I don't exactly have the heart to kill it, but I will definitely not allow it to breed.

(2/25/96)
We lost another one yesterday, for no conceivable reason. It's only been a week since I've done a water change, and the water checks out fine.. the plants are fine, the other fisk look good. I can't explain it. The body looks fine, other than being dead. Yet another mystery. The parents have acted like they were going to spawn a number of times since the original batch, but I don't think the female has laid eggs at all yet. I'm not sure if this is because of the aggressive climate in the tank, the relatively acidic water, or something I haven't thought of yet. The male is now almost twice her size, but she holds her own and is looking fine.

(3/4/96)
Well, we gave one of our babes to Peter Strickland, a person I used to work with at CIT. He has a 20 gallon tank with some tricolor, rainbow, redtail and albino sharks (ironically, they rarely fight, even though they're rumored to be territorial and aggressive toward their own species - I have a red tail shark and two rainbow sharks in a 55 gallon tank, and they're always chasing each other around and bite each other. His fish are packed in, and perhaps this subdues them). The babies are now a little over an inch long. I'm a little worried about the hostile climate awaiting the little fish when they return to the big tank.. we'll see. I just noticed for the first time, a rainbow tinge to the dorsal fin on one of the larger babies. It's moments like that, when I remember why I love these fish so much. They're becoming pretty handsome!

(spring, 1996)
When the three remaining convicts were about 1-1.5 inches long, they were returned to the 55 gallon tank with their parents. The mutant with the big/small eyeballs got picked on a lot, and although he was moved to his own 5 gallon quarantine tank, he succumbed to an awful bout of fin/tail/body rot. He had been pecked at on one side of his body, and his slime coat was irritated. His skin peeled away hopelessly. I treated him with some antibiotic stuff (I don't have the package with me now), which had cured my tiger barbs of an episode of ich and slight fin fungus, but this poor convict kept sloughing off layers of pussy skin-like gunk and looked like he was in terrible pain. His tail deteriorated, and his color was almost gone. I finally euthanized him, to end his suffering. The other two convicts (one male and one female) are doing fine.

(summer, 1996)
The female I gave to Peter is doing fine, and the two remaining are healthy and living with their parents. Unfortunately though, they are.. fit to be culled. The female hasn't grown much at all in the last few months, and is still a meager 1.5" long or so. She holds her own against her larger tankmates, but spends a lot of time hiding under rocks. Her brother is big and a very aggressive eater (kmkm!), but he has poor color, not very good stripes, and is shaped very awfully. He almost has a disc-like shape - instead of his dorsal and ventral fin edges remaining parallel to each other, they point toward each other neat the end - as if he's been pinched in, or as if he has an adult head and an adolescent rear end - very undesirable trait. We've decided that it would be irresponsible of us to allow any future generations fron any of these convicts to live, both because the offspring seem to be not very hardy and funny looking, and because the world just doesn't need any more convicts..:-) I think that if we decide to get serious about breeding fish in the future, we'll move on to a more challenging and sought after species.. like ANY OF THEM!!

Last Updated July 20, 1996