Alright so as many of you know I have a big scary Toadfish in my 29gallon. Before I got him my convicts would breed like crazy. I have 2 females and 1 male. I have plenty of hiding spots and and pvc piping for caves.

They don't breed anymore and I know they don't breed and then get eaten because I search my tank everyday. Also the toadfish stays on one side of the tank and the convicts usually hide in the big plant on the other side.

So are they too scared of the toadfish to breed? Could it be the sand? You'd think they wouldn't mind what substrate they have to breed.

Guess no one has any opinions or answers to this?

serial i have been pondering this one and waiting to see what others ideas may be, i personally think that the toad fish added a new element to the tank, ie- fear factor, if your convicts are hiding in the leaves and not near their normal area i think this could be the problem also i think that if the fish would not normally see each other in the wild that this could also be an issue, with the toad fish being a stealthy little bottom dwelling predator and the convicts being shell/rock cave dwellers on the bottom of the tank it may be that the convicts don't feel safe laying their eggs there, here is what i suggest, build up your cave system so that it's taller, ie stacking a couple caves on top of other caves till you have reached about the middle of the height of your tank, this may give enough distance for the convicts to feel safe enough to breed again, you could do this by stacking the caves from the back corner of your tank on the right hand side so that the plant there would cover part of the opening and this would give a bit of added security to the convict pair, secondly check your water parameters, although i know that convicts breed in almost any condition of water, something may be off just enough to cause the convicts to stop breeding, another element is that when most fish people like myself get new fish they are upfront on the tank watching the fish very closely, as the tank ages we are able to sit back a ways and watch it from afar, this could also be an added stress to the convicts. i notice it takes some time for a fish to acclimate to me being upfront looking in the tank at everything making sure the plants are ok, plus being that i need to prune and trim often having my hands ( or in my case whole arm) in the tank often can cause fish to become a little more shy until they are use to the schedule.
just some ideas, i hope they help,
Brandon

very simple... they wont breed because they are scared... it has nothing to do with anything else... they know there's a predator in the tank, and they will not breed because of him...


all of my breeder tanks are species tanks... that means they are by themselves... unless they are the dominate display species... like the severums... they are in a community cichlid tank...

i know you got the stone fish and the convicts so you could control the colony of convicts and feed your monsterfish at the same time... but things don't always work the way we plan them...




good luck...

Well today i had a batch of fry hatch. More than I have ever had at one time. The pair of convicts really made their side of the tank protective. With hills of sand and holes. I have had a 10 gallon setup cycling for a month now with no fish in it so I decided to throw half the fry in there and kept the other half on the display tank.

How do you think the separate fry are going to be with no parents in the 10 gallon? I threw an algae wafer and a shrimp pellet in there just in case they decide they want to eat.