Wild Microgeophagus ramerizi..

[ste12000]

I love Rams.. They are a beautiful fish and im sure many people have never seen wilds in the flesh, there are so many strains available now and very few of those are a improvement on the wild fish.

Last month i imported a box of rams direct from Columbia and was pleasantly suprised by the size and beauty of these fish, they are still young adults but after settling in for six weeks and having their numbers thinned the remaining 15 or so fish have coloured up beautifully and have started spawning.. Ive always found rams to spawn much more prolifically when crowded together, this time is no exception, they seem to like to defend their own little territory and doing so certainly encourages spawning!!

Heres a young male fighting for dominance(He is not the most dominant fish in the tank)

This is the latest pair to form, judging by behaviour they should spawn this evening.

And heres a spawn from last night..

 

[aquaticclarity]

I also just got in some really nice wild rams...must be a good time of year for them! I have never worked with rams beyond bringig in large numbers and distributing them but I intended to pull a few from this latest batch and get them set up.

I find the bare bottom tank with a flower pot drip saucer and interesting spawning target! I'll have to try that. Normally I'd use a tank set up with fine sand, wood, and plants but maybe I don't need to work so hard!

Thanks for the great pictures and indirect tip!

 

[ste12000]

Ive bred Rams for many years, ive done the whole biotope aquarium setup and have great sets of pictures of Rams spawning and raising fry, quite often the offspring would then be removed to bare growout tanks and at around 3-4 months of age they would start to defend the corners(Easiest place to protect in a bare tank) and spawn there directly on the silicone, obviously every batch was eaten long before freeswimming and i also could not remove the sticky eggs from the silicone, so i started adding clay pots(Actually caves for apistos once turned upside down) into the corners and the fish spawned on these allowing me to remove clutches of eggs. If space was available i could quite easily of raised several thousand rams per month breeding them this way, it was not unusual to get 4 spawns per day..

Heres a few more pics of previous spawns.

 

[Mike Wise]

I sometimes think that Rams would be better parents if kept more naturally. According to Dr. Staeck, Rams are colony breeders in the wild and the juveniles gather into large schools once the parents drive them from their breeding territory. It might be worth trying a group of 10-15 in a 30 long or 55 and see how it works. BTW I much prefer the body shape and more pastel colors of wide Rams; just me.

 

[ste12000]

My observations back that up Mike, ive noticed that they like to defend their territory and are far more prolific when kept in large groups, almost like the behaviour of central American cichlids in a way, they choose a spawning site and have to defend it from all the surrounding fishes, mine only defend a area of around 6 inches from the spawning site, anything outside that is relatively safe from attack.

It is possible to spawn individual pairs but i do feel they enjoy protecting the area and it makes them more willing to spawn.

One other observation is that the same male has now spawned with three seperate females over the course of three days!! all in the same area next to the filter..

 

[ste12000]

Update on the eggs, all hatched fine, i was suprised but there was no bad eggs at all, almost every single one hatched out with no problem.. It looks like there are going to be a few F1 rams knocking about soon!!

This picture was taken this afternoon.

This one this evening!

 

[Racine Vice]

Did you pull that saucer from the parents tank to raise those fry artificially? If yes, could you describe your method for going about this?

Scott

 

[Melanochromis]

...

One other observation is that the same male has now spawned with three seperate females over the course of three days!! all in the same area next to the filter..

That's something new for me. I never thought rams would do that.

 

[ironfists]

so if the fry get old enough are you going to sell them. If yes I am interested =)