Pale Jack Dempsey, Possible Overstock?

[vitacrux]

Hello All, not sure if these forums are still active or not. Returning after several years. I have recently (3 weeks ago) upgraded my 55 gallon to a 75 gal aquarium. The 55 gal was home to a Jack Dempsey (Unsure of gender) a pleco and a rainbow shark (I'm aware of the incompatibility from between the pleco and shark). After transferring the JD began to pale in color with dark bars becoming prominent on his body. I know that this could be due to stress or possibly from the substrate. (Using pool filter sand, which was in the old tank as well but it had grown a little dingy over the years so I replaced and it is now much more white.) The JD is approximately 1 to 1.5 years old, been in my care for 6 months or so.

Approximately a week after the upgrade I was excited to add 6 convicts cichlids to the tank. I believe I ended up with 5 male and 1 female convicts of varying ages, 2 are still pretty young so it's hard to tell.

Using a fluval 407 filter with transferred media from my old 405, keeping an eye on water parameters (experienced a small ammo spike as I lost some of the old BB from the substrate change etc. but doing water changes as necessary. ) Temperature is 79 degree F. PH is a little high at 8-8.2 but I've read most Cichlids are hardy and can adapt to this. (I think I've got a rock in there that is raising it.)

Feeding same food as prior to tank change.

But for the last three weeks I can't get the JD's color to correct. Is it stress related from now having the convicts as tank mates? Any ideas and suggestions are appreciated.

Pictured in bottom right, sorry for glare. I've tried to provide plenty of hiding and line of sight breaks, but this is my first time working with Convicts.

 

[charliebankston]

Prob just stress from the move. I moved a red devil from a 45g to a 75g and it took her a solid month to act right again. If there's any red at all on the bellies of the convicts, that's female. If there is indeed a 5m to 1f ratio they'll kill her by harassing her to breed non stop. Once she has spawned and there is fry or eggs in the tank, she won't spawn again. But they'll keep trying. Just fyi. And the red on the females shows up when they're pretty small

 

[charliebankston]

They say that new world cichlids don't change color much like the Africans. I keep many of both continents. The Africans change in a matter of minutes, but I've seen stress etc change the ca/sa cichlids almost solid black or they go pale too

 

[vitacrux]

Prob just stress from the move. I moved a red devil from a 45g to a 75g and it took her a solid month to act right again. If there's any red at all on the bellies of the convicts, that's female. If there is indeed a 5m to 1f ratio they'll kill her by harassing her to breed non stop. Once she has spawned and there is fry or eggs in the tank, she won't spawn again. But they'll keep trying. Just fyi. And the red on the females shows up when they're pretty small

Ah thank you, I had not accounted for the first "pouting" as the potential problem!

 

[charliebankston]

Haha! Hopefully that's all it is