Mysterious Red Mark On Ram - Any Ideas?

[daiandgems]

Grrr took a peek in the tank and discovered a red what appears to be a wound on the side of our Ram. The other fish seem to be taking advantage of this and are having a go at him I hate seeing them do that!
Any ideas what it is?

 

[Truck]

I don't know what it is, but the ram looks very malnourished, how often are you feeding and what are you feeding? Also what is your water temperature and the GH+PH of the water?

 

[daiandgems]

He is new to our tank, we've only had him a couple of days after we lost our male ram last week. We feed them every other day, and we use flake, sinking tablet and algae wafer (for Plec).
Water temp is 26, and PH is 7.5, no reading for GH.

 

[Truck]

You need to feed more often with a better variety of food, I would take him back, Blue rams should be kept in waters with a temperature of 28-32oC with a PH of 5-6.6 and a GH of 0-12, fail to meet these and they won't last two seconds.

In the meantime, feed him blood worms once weekly, and brine shrimp every few days, along with flakes, Also you can try tuna.

 

[daiandgems]

we do feed them blood worm once a week.When we researched water temp and ph levels before we had our rams 25c-30c seemed to be fine as was the ph level of 5.5-7.5 as for him looking thin i think he was like that when we had him he jus needs fattening up lol.

 

[Truck]

90% of all sources on the internet quote the wrong parameters for blue rams, the parameters are vital.

 

[daiandgems]

Thanks for letting us know that. Just wish we had found this forum sooner, and also wish info sources were correct too grrr!

 

[WILDER]

Bless him.
He does look on the thin side.
Just keep a look out for when the fish goes to the toilet.
Also check the anus is not enlarged or red and inflamed.
That no worms are prutruding from the anus.

Any white eding around the red wound, as it hard to tell in the pic.

Also listen to truckasaurus123, he knows what he's talking about.

 

[Squid]

90% of all sources on the internet quote the wrong parameters for blue rams, the parameters are vital.

daiandgems,

Tis true.. The main book I use though does have a recommendation of 6.5 too, so slightly acidic. The thing with the PH scale is that even just one step in the PH scale changes elements of the water (H+) multiply/change by ten fold. therefore two steps would be a fairly large change. So not only is 7.5 alkaline and not acidic, its quite a big step into the alkaline scale in relative terms, in comparison the the acidity recommendation. What I am saying is that a step from 6.8 to 6.7 isn't the same amount of change as a step from 6.7 to 6.6.

A few years back when I started fishkeeping I purchased some blue rams too, and my water is similar to yours. Unfortunatley they didn't last long. Fishkeeping is annoyingly like that, and sometimes the tank has to define what fish are in there. You an change a number of things, but PH is always a trickier one to play around with, and therfore stability of ph is often the safer route.

Squid.