done with rams for now

Ramirezi

Ramirezi

Punish the Deed not the Breed
Apr 26, 2005
111
0
0
46
Florida
well i just got a call from my gf. she just found my 2 blue rams dead. she tested the water and everything is ok. last night they had lost their color and i was worried that something was wrong. i did a water change and they didnt get any better. they didnt show any symptoms of being ill except the sudden loss of color. i had them for almost 2 months.
before that, i had a pair of gold rams, but they developed HTH. i treated them for it, but unfortunately they didnt make it. i had gotten these guys from two diff lfs. one lfs said they got theirs from someone who is breeding them locally and just gives them his fry. so i thought i was getting a good hardy pair. i guess not. and they're expensive fish.
i'm just going to stick with kribs for now. i've got a bunch of fry to tend to now anyways.
if i get rams again i'll have to get some from a breeder. all the other rams i've seen in town have ich or just dont look very healthy. poor stock.
 
I have given up on them as well. I have one left and he is in a 10 gallon with three apple snails and 5 neons. I cant put him in with my three bolivians. He is only and inch and the bolivians are 2" and the blue rams pushes them around. I figured given the size that they would be alright in a 29 till I can upgrade I guess not.
 
Well sorry for the losses, and rams are not expensive fish. Regaurdless, having rams get HITH? Sorry but your doing something majorly wrong. Rams are not hard to keep at all. You need to do some more research and listen to people that know Rams and do what they suggest or don't bother keeping them.
 
Yes, the gold rams had what i guess was HTH. none of the other fish i had developed this. when i went to the lfs to seek help, the other gold rams in the tank where i had bought them from now had HTH as well. at least thats what the lfs told me. they had open sores on their heads. the lfs refunded my money and told me how to treat the sick fish.
and to me, rams are expensive relative to what i have paid for livebearers and tetras...around $3 a fish. the rams i've paid anywhere from $6 to $10 a fish. not horribly expensive for cichlids, but expensive compared to cheaper tetras and platys. and i paid more for the rams than i did the kribs. and they're doing much better.
well if i'm doing something seriously wrong, then why are only the rams dying off? the water tests are coming out fine. and the other fish in the tank are not dying or showing any signs of illness. i read the info on rams, what temp they should be kept at, what water parameters they need. and i followed them...and they still got ich or just died.
so i'm not messing with them anymore...i'll stick to kribs for now. i've had the kribs for awhile and not a single one has gotten sick. and they're breeding successfully. which isnt saying much because they reproduce like rabbits... :rolleyes:
 
Well could have been HITH but I highly doubt it. More likely would have been a severe bacterial infection. Second getting rams from a LFS is a bad mistake, they are 99% asian bred stock, and simply suck. Kribs, well they aren't much more difficult to keep and spawn than Convicts are. Sorry but even $20 a fish isn't expensive to me, I would even pay that for some tetras, livebearers and such. I commonly pay $50+ for a single discus.
 
Ramirez...were you using PH up and down to keep the PH at what all the available info says it should ? If you were, that could be one of the problems. I don't mess with the parameters at all with ANY of my fish. I am keeping rams quite well in PH as high as 8.2 with no ill effects. Have even bred and raised a batch of fry in it. My water however, is very soft...about 80ppm.

All I did when I brought my rams home was to very slowly acclimate them to my water....and by the way...I bought my rams at a lfs....I asked the owners where they got the fish from and he said that they ship all thier fish in from Fla...but don't know how or where they got to Fla from. Mine did have camelanus nematodes, which I found out about a week after purchasing them. Got the appropriate meds to treat that and only lost one of the rams...mostly because I had no idea what was wrong with it and by the time I found out it was too late for that one.

I don't do anything special for my rams...just do regular water changes though I do have them in a planted tank with 2 dwarf gouramis and a batch of otocinclus.

Too bad you had such trouble with them, but I can sure understand why you would give up after all that. It's no fun keeping a fish that keeps dieing and getting sick on you....no fun at all !! And having difficulty with a particular species is not a sign of doing anything "terribly wrong"....sometimes I think ones water just isn't condusive to certain types of fish for one reason or another.
 
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