cyilchids wierd behavior!

Question
Hi, well i have had my 37 gallond tank for over a year now and everything has been fine, so fine that my convicts have bread.Well my question is that i also have large sized leopard cychlid and a couple of red jewl cychlids and some others, but fore about a week my tank has become crzzy! for some reason my big male convict has been almost bitten to death, and my favorit fish of all the leopard cychlid has been bitten a lot, therfore he hides and does not come out to eat.So i decided to remove him and put him in my 10 gallond tank, about 5 hour later i fed him and wierdly he ate, he also ate 2 fish that were in there including an irridesant shark and a guppy, the moment i say this i put him back in the tank again now he is hinind and will not eat, i beg you please help!!!!THANKS!!!!

Answer
Hi Michael!

Well, your letter was kind of hard to follow but I highly supsect since your convicts are breeding now that they will not tolerate the Leopard and red jewels. Convicts can easily bully a fish twice their size and are at their worse when spawning. So the best thing (and the only thing to do) is remove all the fish that are living with the convicts and allow them the whole tank to themselves while they raise their babies. There is little that can live with convicts while they are spawning and sometimes the one individual of the pair may turn on the other.

Switching fish back and forth from tank to tank can be very stressful especially if they have already been badly nipped by the convicts. The only thing you can do to save your fish is seperate all of them into adequately sized tanks. Please do this right away or your beloved Leopard cichlids and red jewels will likely succumb to the Convicts extremely territorial nature.

I hope I gave the answer you were hoping for. Thanks very much for your question and if you have anymore, feel free to ask away.

Hope this helps!

Happy fishkeeping!
Karen~