Convict Cichlid care might not be as easy as you think, when it comes to raising the fry and minimizing casualties. When I started with my first batch of fry, after about a month or so, I separated the parents from them, so they could breed again. While observing the fry, I noticed that bullying was going on even among those tiny kids. Those that were big, got bigger and bigger and made life tough for the smaller ones. Large convict cichlids will take full advantage of their size and bully the hell out of the smaller ones. I observed that by separating the fry on basis of size, ensured that even the small weaker ones grow big. Glass partitions are real helpful with this stuff. As far as food is concerned, they appreciate a varied diet. I mostly feed them commercial pellets and occasionally, dried blood worms or tubifex worms.
Beware, these little fellows are hogs when it comes to tubifex worms and if fed extra, they don't seem to realize the concept of a full stomach. Sometimes, they eat so much, that their bowls, stick right out of their anus which is bad thing. One thing i want to mention here is that i used to feed them powdered dried prawns and noticed that it did havoc to the digestive systems of the babies. i would notice sharp fibers sticking out of their anus and many were stunted and growing out of shape. So i stopped feeding them this and give them dried daphnia, powdered oats or crushed commercial pellets and they do just fine. im more of a dried feed kinda person, so i notice that growth isn't that fast. my uncle used to raise fry on live feed, and do regular water changes and growth rate was explosive. if you wanna boost growth, follow the same.
I don't really understand why life feed out-beats dry feed, but it does. The nutritional content is the same. Maybe some necessary chemicals and ingredients are more efficiently and readily absorbed which boosts growth in comparison to digesting dry feed. if you are going live feed, one important thing to note is the high possibility of diseases and parasites, especially in tubifex worms. Yes, live feed damn right increases the chance of diseases. It all depends on the source. If the live feed is caught in the wild, be sure to have a lot of bad stuff along with it. The rest is up to the fish's health and immunity. stressed fish are more susceptible to diseases. As far as parasites are concerned, they stick in the gut and utilize most of the nutrition and the fish will appear Mal-nourished, lanky, flat (you will know). A common way to kill parasites is to give salt water treatment. Live feed which is taken from clean cultures is more reliable. You can start your own cultures too, but that's an altogether new topic. I might put that too up here. In the mean time you can Google it.
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