Blue Ram Is Really Ill

I have a blue ram and all was fine till this morning. He looks really pale, not yellow any more he is all grey. He is breathing rapidly and was at the surface alot. All other fish are unaffected. I am doing a large water change now, and he is sitting on the bottom, not moving out the way of the hoover or anything. I have just had a green water problem, hence water change. I dont know why i got green water all of a sudden after 7 months - could it be my new reflectors?

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Spiceweasel....it's hard to help out unless you give a bit more info..tank size? water params? andy treatments added? nitrate level? etc...see help request form above.

German rams have a reputation for sometimes up and dying...most commonly related to water conditions. If this happened quickly and you see no external evidence of infection or parasite, there might not be much to do.

If it were my fish, I'd put him in a hospital tank and add aquarium salt and observe to start off with.

The green water sounds like your water conditions have predisposed to an algal overgrowth which would imply poor water conditions explaining hte above. Long lighting intervals can contribute SH

Juwel Vision 260 all levels are spot on and as ahould be. I had a nitrate spike early last week as flatmate overfed fish, but did a fair few water changes since then.

I added anti finrot and fungus 2 days ago to help a finrot on firemouth, but finrot turned out to be cos of fighting and not finrot. I have never heard of rams being intolerant to this

tested again.

Nitrate 5ppm and ph 6.8

As steelhealr says, you need to put more info regarding you tank especially water quality, in particular Nitrate and Ph.

I've kept Rams for a while and they need soft acid water and DO NOT like nitrate.

Test your tap water for Nitrates and Phosphates, this could also explain your algae bloom.

Keep up the frequent partial water changes with good quality water.

And good luck.

steve711 said:

I've kept Rams for a while and they need soft acid water and DO NOT like nitrate.

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I have never had a problem with rams and unless there has been a new addition to the water system, ill test in a mo, then i dont assume it would be that. This nis the first time in 6-7 months the ram has looked remoteley ill.

hopefully it pulls through. my rams both went the same way. very sudden change (almost went black), and were gone after a day

awoke this am to find he had passed away. He was 7 months old.

Rams can be tough sometimes. Sorry for your loss. I had two that did great for a long time and then just seemed to be withering and moved on without any external evidence of disease. As above, I think they need better water conditions than we think, i.e., elevated nitrates over time probably to them in. JMO. SH