How do you know when pink convict cichlids are paired?

Convict Cichlid breeding question??? please help!!!?

• okay, so I have six convict cichlids with like 1 pleco and 15-30 wild guppies in a 20 gallon tank. (yes I know the cichlids are not a good mix with the guppies but I got the tank with the guppies so Im kind of stuck so please dont comment about my fish mix). And I recently found out that the female cichlids have a sort of gold flash on their bellies and the males stripes are a jet black come time to breed if im correct. So I saw like 3 or 4 of my cichlids have the gold flsh and Im assuming tht their females because of this. And the other 3 of them have jet black stripes- like really dark black- so I am assuming that they are males. Because I now pretty much know their genders, I would like them to breed so that I can have more cichlids. how do I get them to breed? I heard that you should get a small ceramic flower pot and put it inside for their eggs? Is their anything I can do to help them breed? And what should I do or buy to get them to breed?------ Also I might be getting a larger 60 gallon tank- but not anytime really soon.

• Answer:

  actually a easy way to tell when the females are ready to bread is they have orange spots on their belly and they start like hard to see but when they want to breed the orange becomes so bright the males dont have orange tho so you got the right ones sounds like to help them breed you can use a cave flower pot or anything like cave like really works theyll dig under stuff to and also there eggs stick to stuff so id say a caves best but flower pots good to oh and also flat rocks work to they have to be flat and also i had my cichlids i put a big rock in not flat tho and they dug right under it and laid eggs on the ceiling oh and i have to worn you now sorry for saying this but get the other fish out the babies are mean little things theyyll bite every thing so good luck with your fish i hope they breed oh sorry for this being so long but one more thing if you get something from out side make sure its thouraly washed or boiled so good luck hope they have baibies sorry last thing when there pregnant the female has two little thing from the bottom of her they dont hang out just ther there eggs