Help with Blue Ram... please

Curious

Hi emg,
I 'overheard' another of your conversations about not really wanting the hassle of shipping your babies ... So, I went off the the lfs and bought a male ram...
What were you going to suggest that credenza do with the dead body?

If the water quality is not a problem, why do rams keep dying off like this? Do you have a theory? Inquiring minds want to know! The only advice I hear is to buy a ram from a local breeder, well hello, there are no local breeders of rams in my area! So, I have to keep trying the ones from the store...

Geesh, I'd love to be a local breeder if I could get my fish to live long enough!
Cathy
 
I had a male die for no apparent reason, other than maybe stress from my other male. I had 2 pairs. One of them decided that BOTH females belonged to him. That's the only reason I could think of even though he was perfectly fine the night before. I did have 2 females die, but that was a reseult of general stress, probably from shipping and from being at Walmart.
 
I had NEVER been able to keep Rams alive. That is the German Rams that is. Every single one I've ever had died within days. After weeping over my last one I swore them off. But I stood up strong and decided to be the big girl that I am and bought a Bolivian Ram from my LFS. They gave me complete permission to cry if it or any of my fish die for that matter... :) The Bolivians are supposed to be a little hardier. 4 months later I still have my Yellowbelly! The longest I've ever had one.
Take care,
Mary.
 
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mduros, I did the same thing - well kind of, I didn't swear off blue rams -
I purchased 2 Bolivians yesterday. A male and female, from 2 different stores, making sure I get the right sex and health! They are cool, but right now are so washed out/grey and stressed. I've been keeping my tank light off to try to reassure them. They are much bigger than the normal size you see in the stores, I figured they had been around awhile and if there was some sudden death disease, they would have died already.
I did buy one more male ram. My female looks soooo good, she needs a man to admire her! Anyway, I bought a big/older one too. We'll see if that makes a difference, I am also treating him with Prazi for flukes, and then Metronadozole for internal parasites... just to be safe.

NDferro,
Did you have ich in the tank?! If what you saw was really ich, it should have spread to other fish as part of its lifecycle. Did you introduce a new fish/plant to the tank w/o a QT period? I don't believe ich is always present in every tank. Just doesn't seem possible given it's life cycle. I once read that flukes are the number one killer of SA Dwarfs. Maybe it was something else you saw?

I do believe some fish just get stressed out easily and die. (Like bunny rabbits, they live through the initial shock, but then die a few hours later for no apparent reason). Heaven knows what hormones and chemicals they are pumping into the rams to plump them up and make them look pretty for us to spend out money on! But, it seems to me that something else might be going on... could be my imagination or just wishful thinking. I know that exposure to ammonia, etc damages the gills and maybe they never recover from shipping?

Cathy G
 
My ram had ick she had "Gotten over it" in a QT but from what i read and what made me check is that most times ick starts in the gills where you cant really check for it
 
treated in qt every other fish in the tank is healthy this fish has ich a year ago when i first got it and if showed back up from time to time so no matter what if never really got over it
 
You all really need to convince EMG to ship her super rams. I read threads like these and can't understand how people are having problems. My little buggers are as easy to keep as goldfish.

Some thoughts:

-acclimate your rams VERY slowly. Let them float for 1/2hr-1hr. Open the bag, remove 1 cup of water, replace with 1 cup of tank water. repete every 1/2hr or so. Eventually, you'll have mostly tank water in there. Net your rams and put them in your tank.

-Also check that your LFS isn't getting rams from asia. They're crap, plain and simple. They seam to be the ones that die if you look at them funny.
 
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