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Tank Size:

You can easily hold a single or pair of convict cichlids in a 20 gallon long tank (30"x12"x12") Males get a good 6 inches long, females only 4.

Feeding:

Omnivorous, not picky eaters, any commercial cichlid pellets will do the trick


Tank Mates:

Very few can be kept with convict cichlids. A breeding pair should be kept alone with no other fish in the tank, as breeding causes them to go into hyper aggressive mode, they will not be afraid to even attack you when fry are involved. If wanting to keep a breeding pair with other fish, you'd best invest in a 300+ gallon tank.

A single convict however, does well with other aggressive medium to large size cichlids, as well as large tetras and barbs which can avoid aggression when needed. I've kept mine successfully with tiger barbs, buenos aires tetras, giant danios, and green terrors.


Decor:

Convicts will make themselves at home wherever you put them. They'll dig an redecorate wherever they feel the need to. Live plants are not advised for this fish as they'll be constantly uprooted with their digging.

Sexing:

Males are larger and are only black and white. Females are small and have a prominent orange belly, as well as a blue tint to their fins.

Water Perimeters:

Not picky, they'll live from acidic 6.0's to alkaline 8.4's, and breed in it. Some joke that they'll readily breed in a can of coca cola due to the prolific nature and hardiness.

Other:

These fish are very personable, great to have, but due to their aggressive nature do best in a single pair setup or with other larger fish. It is also common for people to use a group of convict cichlids as "target fish" in tanks with large cichlids such as peacock bass and dovii's, due to their ability to hold their own with other fish, while still being easy to come by. It is not unkown for convicts to live 15-20 years, so keep this in mind when obtaining them.

I'd say chances of this are moderate, which is why I kept them only with big mean or smaller fast fish. They are prone to throwing temper tantrums, at one time he was too busy digging to notice it was feeding time, and when he realized he missed driver he spent 4 hours chasing nut pimelodus around the tank. Of course he was too clumsy to catch such things.

I had a female convict who I had to totally isolate, like you said, though. The only thing she ever liked was a little black angel fish, but said angel eventually wanted to see the outside world and jumped through a small crack behind the tank.