Trouble With German Blue Ram Fry

Posted by Sarah on January 3, 2009

I recently had a question about German Blue Rams from Josh, who agreed that I could share his question with you, in the hopes that he could get some more suggestions.

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 would also cut down on the water changes out of the baby tank.

What I usually do is take a piece of air tube and use it as a little siphon so I do not get babies and I can get most of the waste out.

I only suck the waste out for about the first two months and replace the little bit of water I suck out with fresh Reverse Osmosis water.

Then as they get older I increase the size of the water changes.

I feed freshly hatched baby brine shrimp and Hikari first bites from the day the eggs hatch, so your food is dead on.

If you would like to get away from hatching shirmp daily Brineshrimpdirect.com has many great high protein replacement foods. I have used the arctic copepods freeze dried rotifers and decapsulated brine shrimp eggs with good success.

Well that is about all I can think of at this time.

Please keep in touch and let me know how it goes. Rams are one of my favorite fish and I have greatly enjoyed keeping and raising them.

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?

Filed Under: German Blue Ram Fry

Tags: fry food, German Blue Ram

Mickey said,

You need to start feeding them after about day 5 and when they become belly whompers. They need to be fed baby or newly hatched brine shrimp and be fed it twice a day if not three times a day. As long as the PH of the tank they are in is within the range of the breeding tank then they get no benifit of useing that water. Just give them fresh water. That and keep the temp. around 79 degrees. Good Luck.
Sarah said,

Hi Mickey,

Thanks for sharing what works for you.

We haven’t noticed a difference in the rams that were fed with the first bites vs. those just fed with the baby brine shrimp.

Have you noticed a difference in yours?
Jay said,

I am new at raising ram fry too. Still trying to get some to hatch. Tried leaving them in the main tank in with the community. Lost several batches that way. This last time I moved the new mom & dad & the stone with eggs from the 29 gal. community tank to a 10 gal. of their own. I kept the eggs wet & the parents calm. They ate all the eggs in about a hour.
I am going to leave them in the 10 gal. tank to see if we have better luck with them being by their self’s & that means they and their egg can stay put. Some things I read on this say they will do fine together (mom/dad/fry) Some say take the mom out and others say the dad, yet others say take them both out after the fry swim and others say to pull them both out as soon as you have eggs.
WHAT REALLY WORKS most every time, how & why??? Any help is very welcome. Thank you!
Sarah said,

Hi Jay, it takes time for most fish to learn to parent raise their fry.

The parents will often eat the fry if they are scared, or if they think another fish will eat the eggs.

I know discus will even eat their own fry when they are ready to spawn again.

We moved a pair of rams from a community tank to a 20 gallon, and they didn’t spawn for months.

They seemed a lot shyer by themselves than they had in the group too.

They finally started spawning again when we moved them back into the community tank with the rest of the rams.

Since ours only spawn in the community tank I can’t tell you who it’s better to move out.

We normally just move the eggs out, and hatch them in a separate tank.

That’s the only thing that we’ve been 100% successful with.
Gord1 said,

try raising your tank temperature (mine is 85)and softening your water my rams never spawn until i got the water to below 75 ppm i also use black water extract. I wonder if the community tank has a lower ph, ppm and higher temp as this is what work for me
Sarah said,

Hi Gord1, welcome!
Jay said,

I tried breeding rams a while back. I used a ratio of 1 gallon distilled water (from Giant) and 1 gallon tap water. Made cost a lot cheaper, and couldnt afford an RO filter at the time. I used black water extract to soften up the water, and put an .88 Home Depot clay pot in there for them to lay the eggs. Temp was 80, ph was 6.5. After the aggs were layed, I moved the parents and used Hydrogen peroxide as a fungus killer. It’s a ghetto method, but it works. 1 cap full for every 10 gallons is fine, twice a day. Thats what worked for me, and thats the cheapest way I figured out how to do it. Good luck!
Sarah said,

Hi Jay, thanks for sharing what worked with you.

How many fry did you get, and what did you do with them?
Alexandra said,

Hi Jay, I’m trying to raise my ram fry myself could you please explain me in details how you do it? or anyone. Should I add the Hydrogen peroxide still when they hatch or not?
thank you
Sarah said,

Alexandra, we stop adding the hydrogen peroxide when all of the eggs are hatched or fungused, since the purpose of adding it is to keep the eggs from fungusing.

We’ve also explained above how we raise or fry.
Alexandra said,

ok thank you very much
Sarah said,

You’re welcome.
Allan said,

i been trying to breed my pair of german blue rams too! but i also have the problem of keeping the frys alive.

i heard that newly hatched brineshrimp is to big for them and some say they could eat then =\ so if someone can please clarify that for me.

i also heard that microworms does the trick too! but would frozen microworms from a LFS work?
has anyone used LiquiFry before? and does it work?

you can reply to me back at
Allan_w28@hotmail.com
Sarah said,

Hi Allan, we’ve always had good luck feeding newly hatched brine shrimp to our ram fry, but we’ve never tried microworms.

Actually, I don’t remember ever seeing frozen microworms either.

Let me know how they work if you try them.
Allan said,

well right now i’m making a infurosia and i also got some brine shrimp eggs
and also..i found out there isnt such a thing as frozen mircoworms =P maybe i dreamt it up.
love your blog btw very helpful
Sarah said,

Thank you Allan, and good luck with the rams. There’s so much frozen stuff that it’s easy to get confused!