Blue Rams - Spawned!

[MartinD]

Hey,

I have 4 German Blue Rams in the tank - they've formed 2 pairs.. and today, both pairs have laid eggs!

I'm so happy. They're doing all their cute fanning things. Can't stop watching.

Should I start using some specialist food? If I want these little babies to come up healthy, what steps should I take
and things should I look out for?

TIA

 

[rabbut]

Unfortunately, it is rare for rams to raise youngh from their first few spawns. They tend to care for them for a while, then get bored of it, and eat the eggs Eventualy they teach themselves to not do this, and the eggs hatch into "rigglers" non-free-swimming fry. Again, at this stage it will take them a few trys to get it right. Once they get to free swimming, the pair know what to do, wihout any intervention to this point.
The fry need their first meal once free swimming. Liquifry no 3 by interpet, or baby brine shrimp are ideal first foods.

The parents are best left with the eggs, even though they will probibly eat them. The art of raising fry is a learnt skill that has to be tought and learnt by trial and error, both on the part of the fiah in your case, and in the case of the aquarist if you choose to take care of the eggs yourself. The latter normaly takes longer, unless you have previous experience. Flow over the eggs and rigglers needs to be perfect to be successful, as the eggs will fungus, or suffocate if the flow is off. Rigglers will be removed from the spawing surface later if it is too high also.

HTH
Rabbut

 

[confusion]

A pair of my rams laid eggs earlier this week. I took an air hose and sucked the eggs out into a 2.5g tank I have laying around. I added some anti-fungal (I used kanaplex, but it's probably not available in the UK p I have heard hydrogen peroxide works too).

I put a strong airstone and heater to keep the water at the same temp as the parent's tank. They hatched into wigglers on Thursday. This morning, they started swimming free. I started feeding them liquifry today. You can see them eat it. The slide backward a bit, and lunge at the dot of food they are eating. Funny stuff.

I put some duckweed in the tank and put a desk lamp over the top to hopefully help keep ammonia/nitrites/nitrates down, since there is no filter on the tank.

I started cleaning the bottom of the 2.5G tank by using my trusty air hose as a mini vac, sucking all the gunk off the bottom into a bucket, careful not to get any fry.

I'll be doing 10% daily water change/bottom vacs till I move them to another tank that is cycled - when they are big enough not to get sucked into filter intakes.

I will feed them the liquifry for probably about 3 more days, then switch over to hikari first bites. I'll feed them that for a bit, and once I think they're big enough, I will start feeding them BBS.

I have heard that rams do not have a lot of spawns in their lifespan, so sometimes do not become competent parents, and it is advisable to manually raise some of their spawn, if you want to be sure to end up with new rams.

 

[XPANDA]

here's a question, what size are your adult rams? i have some new ones about 1.5 inches long and i wondered how far they are off breeding??