Ram Pairs?

D

dewilde2

Illinifish
Aug 8, 2006
253
0
0
43
St Louis
So I've decided on a pair (I think) of rams for my new tank instead of the school of dwarf neon rainbows. I have fallen in love with the german blue rams, but think I will have to settle for bolivian rams- everything I read says that the blues are really difficult to maintain!
Stocking will be as follows:
5 bosemani rainbows
2 rams
Something else...haven't gotten that far yet

Tank is a 46g bowfront.

So two questions:
1. Is a pair the best number? or could I have say 4? I'm guessing since they are territorial that's maybe a bad idea.
2. Everybody always talks about having a pair, but I am wondering about how to pick them out at the store. I haven't noticed any in pairs already. I assume I should go for male/female pairs, but I am not really sure how to tell the difference.
Thanks!
 
You'll find oodles of info in the Cichlids section of AC.

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4

That said, You can have more than two Bolivians... I have four, what looks to be 3 male and 1 female. Not the best mix, but they actually get along well, and they have had at least three spawns.... I'm not sure if she's sleeping around or with the same male though. Even the other two males protect the fry once they are free swimming....... Then my Striped raphael comes and eats them... :)

BUT.... I would try to either get all male, all female, or if you are interested in fry, two pair. If you have pairs, they do tend to get hostile towards anything else during spawning, and fry hatching. They even go after the Striped Raphael....Which is like the battleship of the tank. They have never hurt each other or another fish though. 46 bow is plenty large, and the rainbows should like the top most while the rams will be on the bottom... don;t let the small tanks in the stores fool you, they will almost never leave the bottom.
 
Sexing is really really hard with the bolivian rams and the only 100% way of telling is actually watching them breed, there are small hints that you can look out for, let me send you a link once i find it.

blairo1 said:
Until then let me try and help you out in determining sex. Take into account the only real way of knowing is venting them or seeing them spawn, the other details I will show you are just generalisations of what you would expect in differences between the sexes....

First up, ventrical differences:
click to enlarge:



Notice how the males vent tapers back and is considerably smaller whereas the females points more downwards and is visibly fatter.

You can also see the difference in the length and shape of the pelvic fins, although this is not a sure-fire way of telling it can be an indicator.



Picture A. is of a female, I'm pointing this out first as you can see here that the females dorsal looks similar to what one would expect from a male:

You can clearly see her extended ray on the dorsal fin. So I'm not saying this is a way to sex them. You can see for yourself that females too can express these predominantly male characteristics.

Picture B. is also of a female:

Here too you can see the extended pelvic fins that you could expect on a male....

Point made?

Now onto the comparisons (generalisations, whatever you want to call it.)
With that said, picture C. is of a male - you can clearly see the extended 3rd and 4th rays on his dorsal fin:


Picture D. shows a "typical" female dorsal fin, you can see the progressive slope that I with no particular spine elongated.


Picture E. shows a "typical" female head shot. You can see it is more rounded when compared to Picture F.


Picture F. is the male head shot:


Pic G. showing the extended rays on the Males tail fin:


Pic H. shows the "typical" female tail and as you can see, even they can possess slightly extended rays:


Like I said other than venting there is no guaranteed way of knowing, however the differences you can see above (however slight) can help.

Blair.
Click to expand...
 
they are dificult to sex..but a trained eye can help. the easiest it to watch them over time..the female ovipositor is blunt and short the male has a long thin tube.
'
the males are also noticably larger than the females.

as far as numbers..they pretty much will stay near the bottom of the tank. Bolivians are gregarious unless spawning.. if you are trying for a pair have 2 females and 1 male. unlike Blues tho they may switch pairings. I wouldn't exactly say the harem spawn but I have seen males switch to a different female.
 
Wow!

Thanks so much for all this great information! I am going to print this out and take it with me to the LFS. Luckily I work right next to one, so I might start scoping a few out for a few days.

I don't particularly want any babies- I am thinking about going for all males- or would this cause a lot of aggression?

Also, I have never had any sort of cichlid before- what type of food do you guys feed yours?

Thanks again!
 
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