Are Blue rams as bad as their reputation

[aarhud]

A quick search on Blue rams gives you all of the bad. Egg eaters, terrible parents, die at the slightest amount of stress. One reason I have always stayed away from them, even though I love small biparental substrate spawners.

So are they really that bad, and not worth the hassle? Or is it simply because they are extremely popular and people buy them without giving special consideration to their requirements? Hard to sift through the myth and facts just going by the internet.

 

[Rod]

A lot of soft water fish are deemed "hard to keep"…..
Most of the issues stem from NOT keeping them in soft water…and with rams it should also be warm

They will breed in hard water….but eggs are likely to be infertile because egg casing harden before they are fertilised
so parents eat the eggs

Buy quality stock….locally breed from German line breed stock is best in my opinion
keep them in soft warm water….no drama in my experience

 

[Mike Wise]

I believe that many of the problems reported about Rams eating eggs and fry are due to people not considering how they breed in the wild. Staeck reports that he found them breeding in colonies with each pair having a small breeding territory to protect from their neighbors. This keeps both parents very busy. In a single pair breeding set-ups, boredom seems to set in. This often leads to squabbles and loss of the eggs/fry. My guess is that more breeders would be successful at raising fry with their parents if they used a very large tank with 10+ breeding pairs. BTW Staeck also noted that juvenile Rams formed large schools of same size/age fish in the wild.

As for being delicate, again this is due to people not considering their natural habitat. As Rod wrote, they do best in softer water and a higher than typical temperature. Then again some mass producers (where we get most of our commercial specimens) tend to protect their investment by using medications in their crowded grow-out tanks instead of spreading the fish out. This can lead to 'healthy' fish while being under constant medication, but once they are in a different location (LFS) where they aren't medicated all of the time and often at a lower temperature, diseases can appear - often drug resistant.

Rod gives some good suggestions. Either buy good stock from a local breeder or wildcaught fish. Quarantine them at optimal water values and temperature for 4-6 weeks before adding to a breeding/community tank. They should live a long time.

 

[aarhud]

Thanks guys.

I'll have to wait until I get my RO system going, my tap water has both ammonia and nitrate. But I will give the colony approach a shot, sounds like a fun tank if it would work out. Think I will also wait around on wild caught fish as well.

 

[gerald]

I think the ram's bad rap is due to:
1) disease-infected fish from mass-production farms, as Mike states above,
2) weakened parental care instinct in domestic strains (un-natural selection),
3) they are cute, pretty, and the most readily available dwarf cichlid in shops, so many of them are purchased by folks without much fish-keeping (and especially cichlid-keeping) experience. Compared with most other beginner community-tank fish, yes they are more trouble. Compared with Apistos, Dicrossus, & other soft-water dwarfs, they're about the same IMO.

 

[Michael Dean]

Many years ago I found Blue Rams almost impossible to keep alive. I would purchase what I thought were beautiful healthy fish from one of the local shoppes here in New Jersey only to have them die within a few days. I think this was because the only available fish were coming in from Asian breeders who did God knows what to the fish.

Nowadays there are so many beautiful healthy fish coming in from other sources that I've found them very easy to keep and breed. I used to keep my fish in 75% RO water but now I use just the local water from the tap and my fish are all beautiful and healthy.

Here are a few keys that I've found.

1. Don't overcrowd them. I keep groups of 1 male and 2 females in 20 or 30 gallon tanks along with dither fish like Green Neons and Ember Tetras.
2. Keep it warm. I keep my fish at 80 - 82 degrees.
3. Regular water changes and good filtration. ( I change 30% every day. Which is probably a bit extreme )

There is a store here in Jersey that regularly stocks wild caught Rams. Just as easy to keep for me. And just as easy to breed.

 

[aarhud]

I was hoping Ste12000 would comment as well. I seen his ram breeding tank on one of Teds fishroom tour videos. Look like he just kept a bare tank with several adults.

I'll have a 48"x12" 55 gallon tank open after some juvenile fish finish growing out. Tempted to try a group of wild rams and see how I fare.

 

[aarhud]

Out of curiosity, what plants are found with blue rams? I know its mostly floating plants with leaf litter. Also, are there any Apistogramma found with them that are readily available in the hobby?

 

[dwarfpike]

I never had any luck with them until two things happened: I picked up Linke and Staeck's American Cichlids I: Dwarf Cichlids book and got a hold of some wild caught blue rams. The book includes collection data, and I was shocked to learn their waters get as high as 90F. Once I raised the heat to 84F in my tank, I didn't have problems with them ever again.

The wild stock helped in regards to not getting weak fish as already mentioned by others.

While not a plant person, I've been told not many plants do well at the elevated temps so I always stuck to java moss and anubias myself. Green Neons and cardinals both seem to handle the high heat well, as do rummynose. The collection info makes mention of no aquatic plants being found in the location they collected, just the overhanging as you mentioned.

 

[aarhud]

Thanks Dwarfpike,

I'm trying to figure out why so many Apistogramma are listed as being found in the same area, but yet we don't keep any of them in elevated temps. Is it just because rams live in specific areas of the Orinico, and other parts where the Apistogramma are found are not nearly as hot? I was using fishbase to try and get an idea of the environment, and a lot of cichlids were listed with the rams.

 

[dwarfpike]

I think hongsloi and hoignei are found in those same elevated temps if I remember right. If Mike doesn't pipe up, I'll dig the book out and double check for ya.

 

[gerald]

Even within a local area stream temperatures can vary quite a bit, especially in low-gradient streams (like the NC/SC coastal plain). Some species may occupy shallow bays off the main channel where sun exposure and limited flow can raise the water temp 10 degrees F (~ 6 degrees C) above the adjacent flowing stream channel. Also, during hot weather some species seek out cool spots along the stream-banks where groundwater seeps into the stream channel. They may leave their cool refuges for short periods to find food, then return. The opposite occurs in winter, when they use groundwater seeps to keep warm. When fish collectors seine or shock up a bunch of fish in a complex stream with diverse micro-habitats, and then measure stream surface temperature at one spot, they may not have recorded the correct temp range where those fish spent most of their time before being caught. So, two fish species collected within a few hundred feet of each other could actually have different thermal preferences. In steeper-gradient streams there's probably less variation, although the groundwater seep refuge phenomenon can occur even in mountain streams.

 

[aarhud]

Good description Gerald, that makes perfect sense.

Any ideas on nice places to get wilds? So far, I have been told wild rams don't ship well (which makes me leery of getting them shipped to me), and that their is not much demand for wilds.

 

[wethumbs]

Wild rams don't sell, so nobody in the right mind would bring them in. They usually come in as contaminates from Columbian shipments. I got all mine that way. If you tell your local pet store that you want to order 100 of them maybe they can arrange for a special order from the wholesaler.

BTW, wild rams are yellowish in color and lack any blue you see in German Blue rams. I have been crossing my wild rams with German Blue, Electric Blue, and Gold rams for a few years now. At one point last year, I had an average of 3000+ rams per month from all different color strain in my fishroom (yes...three thousands), now I am down to an average of 1000 per month.

 

[dwarfpike]

Jeff Rapps brings them in occasionally. I actually prefer the look of wild rams with their cream coloration, but most people I'd assume prefer the german blues. He always sells out of them fast, so I guess someone besides me likes the wilds.

 

[aarhud]

Sourced wild rams. I'm going to get the fish shipped too me. Are there any pencil fish or hatchets that can go with them? Or is literally nothing found in the high temperature water they live in? I want something to draw them out, but something at least somewhat fry safe. I can always pull a breeding pair to get fry, but I like watching the whole parenting thing take place. So trying to avoid tetras.

 

[caraway]

A quick search on Blue rams gives you all of the bad. Egg eaters, terrible parents, die at the slightest amount of stress. One reason I have always stayed away from them, even though I love small biparental substrate spawners.

So are they really that bad, and not worth the hassle? Or is it simply because they are extremely popular and people buy them without giving special consideration to their requirements? Hard to sift through the myth and facts just going by the internet.

 

[caraway]

I have had two pairs of blue rams for a 6 or 7 months now. They have spawned about 8 times so far. In each case they would eat their eggs after 2 days. I have slowly altered the water parameters and now have the ph to about 6. The hardness is about 20 dh. The one pair spawned 5 days ago. I now have a cloud of free swimming fry around the two parents. I am not sure if the water parameter changes have anything to do with it or if the pair have finally got it. Water is at about 82 deg f. It remains to be seen if the parents remain as good parents or not.

 

[aarhud]

Keep me updated. I'm interested in hearing how things go for you.

I ran into a snag. The place I was ordering my wild rams requires a $100 min order. So I'm trying to find other interested parties from my local club. I picked up Linke and Staecks book on Dwarf Cichlids, and I was really surprised at their breeding account. The two pairs they had in a 40" tank showed a lot of aggression towards each other (Pair vs Pair) and did not eat their fry. Like Mike mentioned, maybe pairs need to another pair or two to squabble with.

I have a 125g tank that I'm going to use, just to see if having multiple pairs changes anything. I'm going to use driftwood, leaves, and rocks to form 4 distinct territories, and introduce 10 rams. The goal will be to end up with 3 or 4 pairs and remove the extras. Since the tank is so big, I'm looking into ways that I could incorporate more plant cover, by making it into a Riparium. I don't know anything about ripariums, so I need to do some research before considering it. I will document the whole process if you guys are interested. Oh, and still looking for something that can handle the heat and work as a dither. I want a true dither, and preferably something that never even comes into contact with the rams.

 

[caraway]

Keep me updated. I'm interested in hearing how things go for you.

I ran into a snag. The place I was ordering my wild rams requires a $100 min order. So I'm trying to find other interested parties from my local club. I picked up Linke and Staecks book on Dwarf Cichlids, and I was really surprised at their breeding account. The two pairs they had in a 40" tank showed a lot of aggression towards each other (Pair vs Pair) and did not eat their fry. Like Mike mentioned, maybe pairs need to another pair or two to squabble with.

I have a 125g tank that I'm going to use, just to see if having multiple pairs changes anything. I'm going to use driftwood, leaves, and rocks to form 4 distinct territories, and introduce 10 rams. The goal will be to end up with 3 or 4 pairs and remove the extras. Since the tank is so big, I'm looking into ways that I could incorporate more plant cover, by making it into a Riparium. I don't know anything about ripariums, so I need to do some research before considering it. I will document the whole process if you guys are interested. Oh, and still looking for something that can handle the heat and work as a dither. I want a true dither, and preferably something that never even comes into contact with the rams.

Fry still doing well and seem to be taking newly hatched brine shrimp. I am spawning my rams in 5 gal. tanks. Bare bottom and only a small potted annubias plant. Also some java moss in the tanks. A couple of flat rocks and a turned over small clay pot. my fish room is fairly small and no room for tanks that you mentioned. I originally had four or five fish in the 5 gal tanks until I saw them pairing up, then removed all of the others. 60 tanks in my fish room and the largest is 10 gal. All devoted to dwarf cichlids and killiefish.