Posted by Sarah on May 27, 2008
This week has been a bumper week for German Blue Ram eggs.
We had one batch of eggs three weeks ago, but unfortunately all of the fry disappeared when we went on a day trip.
Of course that led us to believe that our female adult bushynose pleco is the reason that so few of our pleco fry survive after they leave the cave.
Last Wednesday we noticed a few of the female rams looked like they were ready to lay eggs, and we saw a pair that hasn’t laid eggs in a while dig a little hole in the gravel, and start laying the eggs.
We didn’t really think that we could safely get the gravel and eggs out, so we left those in the tank, and they were eaten by the next morning.
Sunday night Jeff looked at the tank and realized that the pair that laid eggs three weeks ago was laying eggs on a piece of slate again, so we moved the eggs over to an empty tank that we were planning on moving one of the Discus too, to see if the pair of Discus would ever lay eggs again.
Hopefully this batch of eggs will make it, and we’ll have more German Blue Ram Fry.
These eggs are in a 20 gallon tall tank, while the last batch that survived was in a 10 gallon tank, so it will be interesting to see if that affects their growth or anything else.
What’s going on in your tanks?
Posted by Sarah on May 5, 2008
We have more German Blue Ram fry!
I can’t believe how tiny they are!
We noticed two German Blue Rams spawning Friday night, and this morning we awoke to tiny German Blue Ram fry.
Unfortunately the baby guppies in the tank were sucking them right out of the breeder net they were in.
We moved them pretty fast.
Fortunately they are big enough that they should survive with the adult guppies.
I can’t believe the German Ram fry are so tiny!
We didn’t have an open tank to put them in, and we were scared to leave them with the parents because the eggs have gotten eaten every time we’ve tried that, so I convinced Jeff to put the slate the eggs were laid on in a breeder net in the tank with 4 guppy fry, and 2 adult bushynose plecos, and 3 bushynose pleco fry.
Jeff was concerned because that tank only has regular water, and the only other time we had success with Ram fry was when they were in Reverse Osmosis (RO) water.
Fortunately we didn’t have any trouble, and although a few eggs did turn white, none of them fungused like they did in the RO water. We didn’t even have to use hydrogen peroxide to keep the eggs from fungusing - we just through the slate in the breeder net, and let nature take it’s course.
It’s really hard to tell how many fry we have, but Jeff and I both guessed around 50.
Of course we aren’t sure how many the guppies ate.
We did take the slate out of the adult Ram tank before the adults were through spawning, so they did lay more eggs on the replacement slate that Jeff put in after taking the first piece of slate out.
The female did look a little confused when she realized there were no eggs on the replacement slate, but she did continue to lay eggs on it.
Jeff thought that those eggs were oranger than the eggs that were laid on the first piece of slate, and those eggs also turned white pretty fast, so I don’t think the male fertilized them.
That’s a picture of the eggs on the second piece of slate.
It’s a little blurry, but it was the best picture Jeff took.
Posted by Sarah on April 25, 2008
Here’s one of our Adult German Blue Rams.
I think this is a female, but I’m not really sure, I was so surprised one sat still long enough for me to take a picture that I didn’t check after I took the picture.
There’s still a big difference between the adults and the fry and the fry - in size and color.
Posted by Sarah on April 24, 2008
This is a picture of one of the German Blue Ram fry that was taken when the fry were about 3 months old.
There is a pretty wide variation in the sizes of the fry, although they are all tiny.
They’ve come along way though, remember the 1 day old German Blue Ram Fry?
The fry seem to be doing well, and are still eating baby brine shrimp, along with some flake food.
They eat pretty much anything that is in the tank.
We do have the fry in a barebottom 10 gallon tank, but we decided to move a sponge filter over from another 10 gallon tank, and ended up blowing black sand all over the tank - that’s what you see on the bottom of the tank.
