German Blue Ram behaviour

[sao1969]

Hi,

New to this forum & cichlids in general. Had a pair of young german blue rams for a month or so. They coloured up nicely & have been feeding / growing well but since I put a big piece of upright bog wood in the tank the male has become a recluse.

He spends all the time the lights are on hovering at the back of the tank out of sight while the female roams happily around the tank. No signs of illness in him or any other fish, water params are normal, no ammonia or nitrite, nitrate rarely above 10 ppm, nitrate is normally somewhere between 5 & 10 when I do a water change. Temp 27 degrees.

Tank is planted and has plenty of bog wood, I use peat in my external filter & pre-treat my water with peat for small regular water changes. My ph is stable around 7 with the peat filtration.

Could changing the tank layout have upset him by removing his previous territory? He seems disinterested in the female now.

My Gouramis are mating and the male is territorial but only around his floating nest, I've not seen him do anything more than chase the rams away - could aggression/chasing from his have upset the ram?

I do have a second tank I could put him in to see if it's aggression related but it runs cooler, lightly planted, no peat & a little alkaline so would be quite an effort to change that round plus I'd have to offload some fish from there.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[electric eel]

are u sure they havent spawned.the male may be taking care of eggs or wigglers.i have had both males and females do the parenting and sometimes they worked as a team but usually not in my experience.

 

[caraway]

are u sure they havent spawned.the male may be taking care of eggs or wigglers. I have had both males and females do the parenting and sometimes they worked as a team but usually not in my experience.

I have two pairs of blue rams. Both pairs have spawned several times now. In all cases but one they have eaten the eggs before they hatched. in the one case they allowed the eggs to hatch, but the wigglers soon disappeared so I guess they ate them also. Very frustrating. I have had luck with A. cacatoides and kribensis. Not sure what to do about the rams though.

 

[wethumbs]

27 is abit low for breeding rams. You may want to setup another tank with around 30 to 32.

 

[Mike Wise]

caraway, your experience is fairly common. Rams that raise fry in an aquarium are fairly rare. If you want to reproduce the species, then you'll be more likely to succeed if you remove the eggs and artificially hatch and raise the fry like most angelfish breeders do.

 

[sao1969]

Thanks for the replies, looks like the male had popeye so I lost him.

The female is still doing well. I've added a pair of A. Hongsloi now, need to decide whether to leave the female ram on her own or add a male. I'm thinking it might all kick off if I add a male GBR & they breed...?