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?