Tropical Fish Forums
Aquarium fishkeeping around the world!
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Tommy
Advisors
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Mountain View, CA
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 Posted: 2003.08.26(Tue)20:47 Post subject: |
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| Max wrote: | | One last qustion would it be posible to keep a pair of convicts and an earth eater in a 38 or would the earth eater get to big? |
Assuming you are talking about jurupari when you say "earth eater", they would do OK for that size tank *But*, chances are that unless you got it with a significant size advantage already over the convicts they would harass it relentlessly (probably still would)...Trust me when I say that the nasty reputation of convicts is well deserved and it is not an exaggeration... |
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Cyradia
Benefactors
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
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| Posted: 2003.08.27(Wed)5:50 Post subject: |
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| Tommy wrote: | | Max wrote: | | One last qustion would it be posible to keep a pair of convicts and an earth eater in a 38 or would the earth eater get to big? |
Assuming you are talking about jurupari when you say "earth eater", they would do OK for that size tank *But*, chances are that unless you got it with a significant size advantage already over the convicts they would harass it relentlessly (probably still would)...Trust me when I say that the nasty reputation of convicts is well deserved and it is not an exaggeration... |
I've never kept jurupari, but I imagine that their personality is similar to a large severum. I did make the mistake of putting some itty bitty convits (maybe the biggest male was an inch?) into a tank with full grown severum that was much bigger than my hand. One day I came home, convicts had paired up, and the severum was cowering up in the tip top corner of the tank, wrapped around an airline tube, almost laying flat trying to hide from the "itty bitty" convicts. Poor guy, he had that it's about time you got home from school, will you PLEASE do something?!!!?!? glare going on.
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Badfrog
Regulars
Joined: 19 Mar 2003
Location: Deep inside my own mind
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| Posted: 2003.08.27(Wed)18:27 Post subject: |
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| IME, Jurupari's are *very* submissive fish... Mine lives in a 125gallon with a 6" Oscar, a 3" Jack, and a school of 5 silver dollars. He's the low man on the totem poll, although at 5" himself he's the second largest fish. He usually schools with the silver dollars in fact. I can't imagine the torment a breeding pair of convicts would inflict upon my guy. |
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Max
Regulars
Joined: 11 Jun 2003
Location: Milwaukee
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| Posted: 2003.08.27(Wed)21:36 Post subject: |
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Would a green terror or a Jack dempsey do OK with a pair of convicts?
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Cyradia
Benefactors
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
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| Posted: 2003.08.28(Thu)5:38 Post subject: |
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| Max wrote: | | Would a green terror or a Jack dempsey do OK with a pair of convicts? |
Here's the deal with these sorts of questions...they're nearly impossible to answer. No one on this forum can tell you for sure if it'll work or not. First of all, fish reach different levels of aggression as they age, so at any age combo the "fish hand" may play differently. Additionally, mated pairs change the dynamics of the tank significantly. Tank size, shape, and decoration all play roles in it too. Lastly, fish aren't carbon copies of each other and they can vary a lot as far as how aggressive they are. IME, this is especially true for south american cichlids. I've had an oscar who tried to act as mean as a jag and other supposedly aggressive cichlids who acted like fluffy bunnies.
What you should take away from this thread is that paired convicts are aggressive and because of that are nearly always kept in species specific tanks. Anything you put with them is a gamble and you're walking down a delicate path of trying to balance aggression of unpredictable animals in a small glass box. That's not to say it's impossible, but there's not a magic formula we can give you. If you want to try to get a community tank AND a pair of breeding convicts out of the situation, I recommend you start with a huge tank, a bunch of strong dividers to use in an emergency, a back-up plan, and a healthy dose of luck.
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