new ram not eating

[noelberg]

I have 2 new rams (I believe they're blue) in a 20 gal tetra community with a pH around 6.2. Bought them on Saturday. One is voracious, while the other is getting skinny. He keeps going after flakes, bloodworms, etc. and keeps spitting them out. I got brine shrimp, pellets (things that the store said they fed them) - same thing. I think it is breathing heavier than the other one. No inflamed gills though.

Any ideas?

 

[XKrinXerZ]

omg thats the same thing that happend to me! OK heres what i did first i didn't worry about thim for about 3 days untill i tried this. They do spit some out but not anymore at first they did though but i guess they so hungry that they knew that they need to swallow the food cuz thats all they are going to get! lol. Anyways, I got a good pinch of flake food and i put it underwater and let go and with my hands i gave it a current so the food will go down then i took my hand out of the tank and i saw my 2 rams (In my tetra community tank) slowly nibble some flakes. I purchased these guys like a month ago. Now they eat good but they don't come up to the surface to eat. They wait until i give it to them. And they even eat the shrimp pellots i put in for my bottom dwellers so everynight i put in some sinking shrimp pellots and wait 5 mins before i turn off my tank light so my rams can get at least some more food just in case they didn't get enough in the first feeding. Don't worry they won't starve themselves mine simply tried to do that but they just got to hungry and started eating good. Hope this info helped u at least a little bit

 

[Wolfdog]

same exact thing to me three! Cept both mine died (after bout 3 days...)

They did eat blood worm though... some...


Wolf

 

[Jer-]

This used to happen to my rams four. But that was a long time ago. I think those batches werent high quality anyways. They all died after a few days.

I first thought that maybe the food pieces were too big for them, but my other fish smaller than the ram could fit them (bloodworms) in their mouth and swallow with no probs. I tried flakes too, but from my experience Rams do NOT like flakes at all. They either spit out the flakes or jus filter the whole piece throught their gills, making powdered flakes...which in turn pollutes my water. My current pair of rams (very healthy and colorful) hate flakes, granules and the like too.


Anyways, I would also like to know why some rams do that. If anyone knows. B)

 

[noelberg]

seems like rams can be picky ... thought for sure the frozen brine shrimp would do it because the other fish went ballistic over them

but GOOD NEWS! for my ram at least. On a whim I tried some spirulina flakes and it finally kept the food in. Hours later I put some other flakes in and it kept some of those down too. I'm sure the new ram was a little intimidated by the emperors, which didn't help (they go kinda nuts over food).