Egg layers like convicts are termed gravid, because the eggs are fertilized outside after being laid. Convicts are substrate spawners and may clean or remove unfertilized eggs but the eggs and fry remain on the substrate until they are free swimming. Convicts are not mouth brooders, but they do care for and guard the fry. Convicts are one of the harder ones to keep from spawning and raising fry. There are a limited number of livebearers that are properly termed pregnant before the fry are born. They are more developed than egglayer newly hatched fry.
Convicts will move a few fry at a time from one spot to another or to bring a wanderer back to the group, but that is quite far from the definition of mouth brooding.
I copied and pasted this for you! Yes, convict cichlids are mouthbrooders, which means the female parent carries her young in her mouth to protect them. This process is called maternal mouthbrooding and is common in many cichlid species
@@tropicfishkeeping Easy to get by calling a fry a baby and a spawn a litter, those are synonyms. But when you said Convicts are mouth brooders. Which they are not, and you reply like this?
funny, wikipedia, and several books (Cichlids of the World, Dr Robert J Goldstein; Baensch Aquarium Atlas; Breeding Aquarium Fishes, H R Axelrod) I have all agree that convicts are substrate breeders, and the only time they use their mouth is to gather the fry back to the substrate hollow or crevice for the night. They move a few at a time but the fry do not sleep in their mouth as they would if they were a mouth brooder. They use their mouth as a tool to move the fry, not as a bedroom for the night. That is the difference.
