Wow this post from a dif fourm is quite off putting!
Plus with them being for the most part really badly bred with hormones, sufferring permanent devlopmental damage from being raised outside of their prefferred ph and hardness range, more often immuno supressed than not, often kept alive any length of time only because of uv, only alive through antibiotic misuse up until then, something that does have major health consequences from renal failure to susceptability to fungi, overall increased fragility, and infertility.The antibiotics they are given (while being raised as fry - just take a moment to picture how stupid that is) usually fail to cure the problems they are sufferring from, being that they are misprescribed in the first place, and being that not much works against ritual infection of hexamita and mycobacterium at breeders. A genepool more limited than a frontier town where everyone has the last name of johnson, ie: 99 percent of the stock you'll find anywhere, its not a good time to buy blue rams.
Most of the time all you get it deflated ego, a couple of dead rams, and a tank with some really very nasty diseases you cant get rid of without breaking it down and sterilising everything. Then theres the matter that they were difficult to keep in the first place, often a bit neurotic, prone to stress and need superlative water quality and no ph fluctuations, and they like it pretty hot, a little hotter than most other trops are comfortable with.
Its not really about taking on a challenge anymore- that would be the apistogramma. Blue rams these days are a case of setting yourself up for a kick in the teeth. They just arent fun. Theyve been ruined. The major suppliers to the uk are the very asian breeders that have ruined the species in captivity. How do I know? I used to keep them and breed them a few generations from wild before they became asian bred crap. It was a totally different experience. The rams you get in shops now are just rubbish. Add to that there balloon variants and longfin variants with health so bad you might as well stamp on them and cut out the middle man.
Theres tougher, and prettier fish out there, I would suggest looking at those. If you really want a challenge in water quality perfection, try apistogramma, but choose wisely for your water quality, if you like stuff thats small and keep-able and still a cichlid, try shelldwellers, laetacaras, and nannacaras, even the tinier pike cichlids are entertaining and different enough to be well worth looking at.
Blue rams dont come recommended any more. I think of them as a beginners trap, because if you knew how bad the market was, you wouldnt touch them. I could recommend them only for people who can find a generation from the older stock of those brought to the uk perhaps more than 15 years ago. Privately bred. Dont touch the shop stuff. Your chances of finding a good one on UK soil now is absolutely minimal. They used to be a great fish for the experienced keeper, they are now just.... rubbish. The trade knows about the problem too. Their response? More often than not, they ring them. That is to say they take asian bred ones and fob them off as privately bred on uk soil. I havent seen a really good one in five years.
If you really like rams, grab one of the last of the good bolivian rams before they go the same way as the blues. Much better fish anyway, much more resilient, better personality, and much more likely to see old age.
Could well be that your local shops are seeing sense and doing the right thing by not stocking them.
another type of dwarf chilid perhaps?
