I wonder if anyone feeds their oscar convict cichlids. Is there any disadvantage to doing this. Not as a staple but as a treat.

I know a member that used to be here did... And the Cons were FAR faster than the Oscar, so he ended up with 3 O's and a thousand little cons! LOL

exactly what nicki said I had one breeding pair of convicts with my Oscar and they owned the tank even the fry where safe as the male convict would torpedo the Oscar if he came near their cave...

my Cons are nuts, they fight and its hilarious to watch...they are REALLY FAST!!! I hope I dont have a pair, I am gonna be in trouble!!! and one is missing an eye!

Convicts are super aggresive when breeding. i had a pair in a tank and when breeding i would put my finger on the tank. they would follow my finger on the glass like a magnet.

If you are going to feed convict fry to oscars make them small or you could end up with them surviving.

Nicki--Sue wrote:


i don't know if it's the same member, but i remember one with 3 spawing pairs in an oscar tank.
it was fun for some months, but they had to be removed for they became too much.
I thought about breeding them, but as food for my Gar, but I'd have too kill and freeze them first, so i decided against it, for now.
But my Gar still loves the idea.
If he eats barbs, why not convicts?

haha that fish is awesome noddy ...look at them teeth!!!

yea i just set up a separate convict tank about a week ago and i got babies already. I dont want a million little cons in the oscar tank so i would drop one at a time and make sure they got eaten. I was just wondering if there were any adverse effects on the health of the O.

I've got a pair of convicts that have given me 7 300+ batches of fry. My Oscars and Jewel love to case them around the tank. But like other people are saying, be sure to feed them to the Oscars before they get much bigger than 1.5cm.

yea i was figuring that would be a good size. Do the o have trouble catching the cons? should i cut the fins off the cons before i put them in with the oscars?

My male convict just hit maturity after like 2 years. He is becoming a mean little guy so I'm going to put a divider up and separate him from the other fish. I thought about putting him in the oscar tank but I don't want him messing with my baby oscar.



I would NOT do this. First I think it's kind of cruel, second if the oscars can't catch the convict than they shouldn't eat it. It goes back to the fair chance of survival. In the wild all animals have a fair chance to escape, that's what separates an arowana eating a mouse in the wild (although it seldom happens) from someone feeding a mouse to an arowana in a tank because that mouse has no chance in hell of escaping.

If any of you are hunters and have taken a class to get your license, they make a big deal about giving the deer a fair chance to escape, it's the same principle.

That's just how I feel about it

point well taken