*happy*happy*happy*

so, to anyone who wants to hear the story:

i've had a female convict for a while now, she was happily living in my 36 gallon (general cichlid) tank. she was living alright, convicts are pretty hardy on the aggressiveness scale so she was doing good. i picked up a 20 gallon tank, decided to use it for breeding. i put her in the 20 gallon tank. then i started looking for a male mate.

in the meantime, jon's friend jay lost one of his convict breeding pair to an over-hungry catfish. he sent up his breeding male and an albino female who wasn't mature yet (too small). i tossed both convicts into the 36 gallon tank. the male immediately assumed dominance over most of the fish, the female cowered and hid in the fake-coral structure.

the female convict that i had originally was continually growing through this point in time because she had no competition. she started getting big (closer to maturity).

i decided to move the albino in with her to see if i could get some female-female compatibility going. after about 12 hours i took a very beaten very afraid albino female and put her back into the 36 gallon to hide.

i got a 6 gallon tank through the grapevine and decided to move the albino into that so she could grow up a bit. i was having problems heating the 6 gallon tank (small tank means any one of the household heaters was overkill) so i decided to wait till morning to move her (so the temperature would be stable). i went into the tank in the morning to find the albino dead, eyes gone and all her internal organs removed. very nasty. i sighed heavily, got deep-down depressed and went on with the grisly task. her carcass went into the toilet, the male convict went into the 20 gallon tank.

the male immediately dominated the female, chasing her into a red temple that i had in the tank. he was too big to get through the bars, so i left them overnight. by morning he had managed to get into the temple by putting his body up to the bars and rotating 720 in place while pushing against the opening. don't ask me how, but the corkscrew pattern was what he needed to fit though. of course, by the time he got through she'd have ducked out. and by the time he got out she was ready to hit back in the temple again. so they had a few days of chasing each other around.

i set up the root, put some seashells in the tank for them to breed in, aquascaped the tank a bit. she started hiding in the root, dishing out body hits to the male every once in a while (he'd chase her around too but they're only aggressive at each other maybe 5% of the time). he started aquascaping the gravel to how he wanted it, smooth dunes, channels dug through, he started hollowing out a spot under the root. after a few days of digging there was nothing but smooth glass under the root. apparently the channels and smooth slopes are so they can escort the baby fish along easier.

my mom bought me this crazy kiln-fired fish that i thought was pretty cool so i tossed in there. it's just this silly thing with a huge open mouth, kind of like a small cave. well, the female covict decided that she liked that and started ferrying between the root and the fish. i didn't see the purpose in it, until...

24 hours after putting the kiln-fired fish in (about the time of the original post here) i discovered that there were little chunks of something floating around near the fish. my first though was that the ceramic fish was releasing flakes or similar. upon closer inspection though i realized that i was seeing salt-grain sized fish, one side with a thicker body, the other side with a clear tail. i tried to count them, there's at least 30 in there but it's hard to say exactly. all i can see in the mouth of the kiln-fired fish is a black mess of "goop" which is tons of fry.

so after that whole mess and debacle it looks like i've got baby fish. hence my excitement. (*whew*)