Rams

[Scotaidh]

hi,

i know i havn't introduced myself or anything but i'm in a rush kinda.

I keep a 2 foot amazon tank, 3 rams, 1 plec, 5 neons and a cory, heavily planted, pH5.5, bogwood and heavily tannined water, so anyway, i left the light off yesterday morning as i was planning to do a waterchange, and didn't feed, but i never got round to it, so i done the same this this morning, and my rams were acting a bit funny, and i have just noticed that they have laid a patch of eggs, about 5 square centimeters.

Now, i've only had the rams for 2 months, and i used to work in a fishshop, so i kinda know what to do, but i'd like some opinion.

Do I take the eggs out and put them in a breeding box?

Whats the survival rate?

What am i gonna do with baby fish in a 2 foot tank?

Thanks very much for any replies.

 

[cichlidtank]

I personally have not bred rams, but I have heard and read that rams have good instinctive parental abilities. You may have already seen both the male and female fanning the eggs (as opposed to most Apistos. where the female attends the clutch locally and the male creates a perimeter defense). Most people say that the parents should be left with the eggs and fry unless either parent seems to have an unusually voracious taste for eggs. The male supposedly looses interest in protecting the fry after about 2 1/2 weeks to 3 weeks after hatching, and should be watched for aggression towards the juveniles. Another good idea is to keep some java moss in the tank, the fry seem to have a taste for the microorganisms that are usually cultured by the plant. Sorry if this doesn't tell you anything you don't already know, and that I am replying without any actual experience breeding rams.

As for the survivors, I would buy another 20 gallon when the juveniles get large enough and culture the tank with half the substrate from your first tank (mixing in new substrate to both tanks to fill out the now thin layer of gravel (or sand, or whatever you have).

 

[Scotaidh]

thanks for the reply its very helpful.

In the last few hours the eggs have dissappeared, as has the male fish, so I don't know wether the eggs have hatched and he's taken the fry away, or if something else happened.

These organisms in the java moss, do they occur naturally? Cause i've got a ton of javamoss growing on bog wood.