If you have any suggestions we’d greatly appreciate it.

“I was wondering if you could help me i am having a terrible problem keeping ram fry alive!

I have 2 pairs of breeding blue rams and am on batch number 7 with no fry surviving longer than 2 weeks.

The eggs are hatched in a 10 gal nursery tank with 3 live plants, 2 established sponge filters and no gravel.

There is some nice bright green algae on the back wall of the tank.

I do water changes every other day about 50% with water from the breeding tank (which is perfect).

I keep the tank at around 76-78 deg. i believe the fish are going hungry.

I have tried hikari first bites, brine shrimp, and now have tried infusoria but not able to make any.

Do you have any hints for me to be able to raise these rams?

Any clues are greatly appreciated.”

Josh

And my response:

Hi Josh, I’m sorry that you’re having trouble with your ram fry.

I know that Discus keepers say it’s very important to keep any algae or slime off the tank, so that it won’t make them sick, so the algae might be bad for the fry, although it doesn’t seem likely.

We always set up a new 10 gallon for the fry using a sponge filter that we keep in the parents tank, and we use RO water for both tanks.

Do you mind if I post this on the blog to see if anyone there has any ideas that might help?

I’m going to let my husband take over, since the Rams are his pet project.

I might suggest raising the temperature in the baby tank to about 80 degrees sometimes warmer water will increase the appetite.

I hope this helps you out and you get lots of ram fry too.

Good luck, and please keep in touch and let me know how it goes.

Sarah and Jeff

Do you have any suggestions for Josh?

What have you done to get your ram fry to grow and thrive?

Our newest batch of German Blue Ram Fry

The newest batch of German Blue Rams is still going strong.

We have them in a 10 gallon bare bottom tank, and we started feeding them fry food and baby brine shrimp as soon as they were ready to eat.

They seem to be growing a lot faster than the last batch, and we think it’s because we’re feeding them baby brine shrimp every day, now that we’ve got the hang of it.

We sold the last of our first batch of German Blue Rams over the weekend.

I was sad to see them go, but I’m sure they went to good homes, and they’ll be happy not to be crowded into a 20 gallon tank any more.

I think we have at least 40 smaller fry left, but I’m not sure, it’s so hard to count when the tiny little things are darting around everywhere!