There and back Again
(A Convict Cichlid's Tale)

(by ConanTheAquarian December 12, 2002)

This is the story of a fish… a fish that I’m quite fond of actually, since he was one of the first fish I bought, along with a pair of kribensis. The fish I’m referring to is a convict cichlid, a medium sized South American fella. When I first got him, I spent almost a month trying to form a convict pair, but was having problems getting a male and female; neither the LFS guy nor myself could tell the difference. I started with two females, replaced one female for another female (grr) but eventually I found a male and added him to the mix. Each fish was about 1.5”, at the time they were in a 20 gallon high. for hiding spots I had a fake tree stump and this decoration with these crumbled castle walls on top of these caves, with a 3 or 4" hole with an air stone inside of a hollow area. I didn’t like the air stone idea so I removed it, dug a big hole in the gravel and put the crumbled-wall-cave-thing (hereafter referred to as the rock, I know it’s not rock but from a fishy point of view it is) on top of the hole, making a nifty cave that the convicts later enhanced.

So anyway, the fish were doing pretty well, a little bit of scuffling now and then but each female had their own cave (one inside the stump, the other under the rock) to retreat to. The male was like a kid in a candy store… showing off for one female, and as soon as she turns her back (or even before!) he’s off checking out the other one. You can imagine the result, hundreds of baby convicts! I unloaded two batches of them at one of the LFS’s in my area before I started feeding the fry to my Oscar. He loves em! (evil grin)

Then, one day, I wake up and feed the fish as usual. All convicts accounted for. I mean, it’s not hard, one… two… three. Later on in the day, I was going to go crush up an algae wafer for another tank when I happened to walk by the convict tank (in the same room) and thought I’d take a look in passing at my big fella. So hello convicts, one… two… ummm… I know I had three fish in here before… hmm. He must have jumped out! Thus began a frantic search around the fish tank, with nothing to be found. Even accounting for flipping and flopping on the ground there’s no way he could have gotten that far, plus someone had been sitting 8 feet away from the tank and didn’t hear anything. Well, on this day I was planning to move my guys to a 33 gallon I had just vacated. Let me just say that you can’t keep convicts in anything less than a 30 gallon tank! They were way outgrowing my 20 gallon and I’d only had them for a few months.

I decided to move the fish anyway, figuring that he was just hiding really well, maybe under the rock or inside the stump, there was a cavity big enough to hold him there. I removed all the ornaments and still only two fish. I was careful when I took them out, expecting a fish (he’s 4” long, mind you) to come flying out but nothing happened. Now when he didn’t turn up I really didn’t know what to think. The other fish couldn’t have eaten him, he was almost twice their size. They would be bloated as heck if they had. He didn’t jump out, I was sure of it. Was he buried in the gravel? (that sounds dumb but I thought it for a couple of seconds) anyway as I was pondering, I changed my mind and decided to put the stuff back in and wait until I could figure out what happened to the male, because I really had no idea. Until I see this.

As you can see, I’ve solved my little mystery. This is a picture of the underside of the rock, with my poor fishy stuck in probably the hardest to get at point in there with his pectoral fin stuck outside the hole. The light is a flashlight used to illuminate the hole.

Of course the first thing I thought to do was run and get the digital camera, because things like this are what digital cameras and online photo galleries are made for!!

I knew as long as he was in the tank he would be able to breathe so I left the rock in the tank while I thought of a plan. It sounds silly now, but I tried poking him and seeing if I could dislodge him by just giving that extra little something, but no luck. He was jammed in there good. Which sucks, because I like the rock too and it cost me fifteen bucks! But I like the fish more and it’s also alive, so I chose to get the fish out of the rock by whatever means required.

To this end, I retrieved my hammer and my pair of robo-grip pliers. After deciding where the fish was and where I could safely smash this cursed rock I placed one, then two mighty blows (heh) which left a gaping hole in the top part of the rock. A little robo-gripping quickly separated the fishy prison from the main part.

Here’s me after the first stage, now to get him out of the rock he’s trapped in (in the tank) and into the 33 gallon, which is on the desk behind me.
A little bit of ninja-robo-grip technique quickly reduced the rock to pieces, with nary a mark on Mr. fish… Who is that masked man anyway? Also, note the increasing amount of water on the towel beside the tank…

You can see the effective results of the ninja-robo-grip technique here:

and here:

and also here:

Oddly enough, the fish didn’t do anything at all while I was working. I tried to keep the rock under water, but sometimes I had to take it out to get the right leverage. I actually think that he knew I was trying to help him (despite stopping to take pictures every five minutes) and was letting me do my thing. Maybe he was just super stressed and it had nothing to do with me but hey it’s my fish I can pretend at least! :-)
Eventually I snapped the right piece and SPLASH he fell right into the tank. He was pretty freaked out, darting all over the tank, so I put the tree trunk back in and he promptly swam inside it and didn’t come out. I’m thinking, oh no not again! But he popped his head out a bit later when I dropped a little food in. I decided that he had had enough for the day, and sunset was approaching for him (9 pm) so I left him for the night.
He was a little calmer in the morning, ate normally but was still hiding. That afternoon I moved him to the 33 gallon... He was quite worried at first, but within a few days he was back to his old self again. I made VERY sure that all the decorations in this tank can handle a 6" fish, both on the outside, and ON THE INSIDE!
here's a picture of the new convict tank. The male is behind 'his' stump (moved from the 20g) on the left side of the tank.

And so ends the tale of my silly convict. If you should choose to keep these lovely fish, which I recommend anyone try at least once, especially if you're interested in SA cichlids as I am. Convicts are not too big but are tough enough to handle pretty much any other SA fish, and when they don't have fry they are actually kind of laid back. Three things are important for convicts: enough tank space, rocks and caves (not too small!), and an appropriate dither fish (I use tiger barbs, they're fast enough to get away and large enough not to get eaten). Given these, and of course an adequate diet and clean water, you'll have hours of amusement watching your convicts chase the dithers around.

Questions and comments are welcome and can be sent to . Flames and spam will be forwarded to /dev/null so don't waste both our time.

THE END
Now go take care of your fish! ;)
 

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