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Hey everyone,
My blood parrot just laid eggs! She's a five inch female with a giant belly and laid about 400 along the gravel. The only thing different about these eggs is that the only other fish in the tank is a male convict (quite the stud if you look at his mating record). They have been together for almost 3 years now and are inseparable, so I think they may be a pair. She and the convict vigorously guards the eggs against me. I recently introduced live blackworms into their diet which I think may have sparked all this. Anyone know anything similar to this happening in other tanks?

JYJason,

Cichlids will often cross with each other. This is the first I have heard of a Blood Parrot (which is a cross breed cichlid) with a Convict. As far as I knew (not that I have spent a ton of time on it)Parrot cichlids were not able to breed.

The one thing most people will hammer you on is spreading the fry around if they hatch. Cross breed fish are generically frowned upon.

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

From what I have researched I think I found that local parrots have some convict in them, so that may facilitate breeding. As far as spreading the fry I'll definitely want to keep them for myself but if they turn out to be interesting little critters I may hand some out to some customers and friends at the LFS where I work

jeez them little fellas will be crazy,parrot and convict,they will have a lovely temper

Sorry to spoil the mood but I've had parrots 'laying' before also on many occasions..... only to find the eggs never hatch. Apparently they are radiated in the far east before they're shipped to prevent breeding. Plus the fact that they are already a hybrid (of red devil and severum allegedly), chances for successful hatching and rearing is very unlikely. Hope I'm wrong for you though.

Bet they will hatch, parrots infertility is mostly based on male infertility, most of the females will produce viable eggs. Ive seen acara and convict cross parrot hybrids before in shops near me. The colouration is different, merely a murky dilution of the acara or convict colour, they arent the most attractive of fish, and the orange doesnt come through, the paternal fish's colour is nearly always dominant. They wil be muddy stripes with grey and blue, no red or orange.

Unfortunately the parrot deformities will not fade much with the outbreeding. They will still have the rough lips, gill covers, neck kink, abnormal weight gain, and spinal curvature. The temperament in the 4 month old fry ive seen was pretty bad, lots of face grinding going on in the absence of good functional lips.

The females with less deformity will be a bit like owning a hacked off midas cichlid for temperament, probably capable of full bites. The males will have the mood but not the lips for locking with.

Not wishing to sound harsh but i'd probably scrub the eggs, if they go for resale they will largely just be unwanted and wane in a petshop somewhere. Thats what happened to the ones I saw in the shops near me. Maybe they sold one or two, but I think the other 50 or so were pretty much just unsold, underfed, and allowed to wane to death fighting every step of the way. If you wanted to keep one or two thats entirely your choice, but people wont buy them, so raising the entire batch would be pointless. People would probably use them for feeders. I suspect quite a few of the ones at the shop near me ended up in the belly of a huge sleeper goby they have there.

I'll probably raise this batch and not any future ones. Its been a while since I've raised any sort of babies in my tank, and I'm kinda looking forward to having little ones around again. If I end up creating elephant-man-like atrocities I have a shovelnose and a Jack Dempsey in a separate tank that will love to do my dirty work for me, but even an ugly fish is still a fish so I may end up keeping a good bit of them. Thanks for all of your help, I'll keep you posted on the eggs!

I was away from my house for the last day or so and when I returned I found most of the eggs gone. There are about 50 left, 30 of which are unfertilized and white, but the other 20 clearly contain fry! These eggs look like they are currently hatching so I imagine the others already hatched

good luck with those fry! might want to get on preparing food for them!

post some pics soon so we can see the fry develop and how they turn up/color up...

\\\\\\\"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure\\\\\\\"

I don't think they would have hatched personally - more likely for me that one/both parents will have eaten them. Can't imagine any cichlid allowing them to hatch and then eating them immediately. Usually takes something to trigger them culling the brood. If you do raise them, I'd have some serious concerns about a: their birth defects and b: compatibility with other fish once mature. Interested to know how things progress.