New to rams, pointers to keeping them alive

Lauren

Lauren

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Aug 9, 2003
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I just picked up two, stunningly beautiful baby gold rams. I love them, I can't stop watching them. I know that rams are known for being hard to keep a live. What should I do to assure that my new babies live a long, healthy life? This is what I have going for them thus far: temp: 82 gh: 7 ph: 7.4 the tank is moderately planted w/ drift wood and rocks, and they are in good company: 4 gold barbs, 7 rasboras, 1 dwarf flame gourami, 3 cory cats, and a chinese algae fish who doesn't bother anyone. I use RO water, and food switches between flakes, and freeze dried worms. I also have sinking pellets for the barbs and cories (just got them tonight, so I haven’t fed them yet)

Am I doing everything right? Is there anything I need to look out for? Anything else I need to do? I can’t wait for their colors to come out. One has already started to show his blue spots, and I don’t remember he him having them when I first put him in. I guess that means he likes it here.
 
no one? nothing? should I post this again in general to try and get more responces?

good news: they are getting more colorful day by day :)
 
I dont' think there is any tricks to keeping them alive. jsut keep good clean water and you should be fine. The hardest thing is finding good quality rams.Lots of times there are just poor quality rams being sold at LFS and try as you might they mostly die. BUt if you have healthy rams then there shouldn't be too many problems.

I bought some rams last spring.They were locally bred and already used to our city's water(high ph, and fairly hard) so i didn't have any problems.

SO they only thing i can tell you is keep up your water changes.Are you using a quarentine tank?
 
No, I didn't have a chance to set one up, so against all my knowledge, I had to simply put them in the tank. I've been watching it closely, so far, so good. All the fish are healthy including the rams. But its only been about four days now. My lfs has German and Bolivian rams in all the time, this was just the first time I saw the gold variety there. I’ve never had a problem with a fish from this place, but I didn’t ask where the first were from. I’ll just have to trust that they are healthy.

They are looking great, though. One is a lot more colorful than the other, but he was like that when I picked him. The other one is catching up slowly in color, and is about as colorful as the other one was when I brought him home. I’m very happy with the fish thus far.
 
You mention that you are using R/O water. What percentage of the water you change out is R/O, and what percentage is tap? Also, are you adding any trace elements back in with your water changes?

Water quality is indeed the key to keeping rams, so what are the frequency and size of your changes?
 
25% water change once a week. The water is about 4 parts RO 1 part tap, possibly more tap, depending on how long it takes to get the water to the right temp. Explain the trace elements to me. I simply condition the water with water changes.
 
Because R/O water is completely demineralized, and because tap water contains very few of the trace minerals, etc. that fish normally absorb in the wild, using trace elements (go to the on-line retailers, put "trace elements" into the search function, and then look at the results) is often recommended for the more sensitive fish (such as rams and discus).

Another thought: if the algae eater you have is a real Chinese Algae Eater, you might want to think about replacing him. They are fine when small, but when larger (and they do grow to 6-8"), they become aggressive and actually eat much less algae. There are a number of options here that would work better in your tank long term, such as otocinclus or the chaetostoma "plecos".
 
thanks for the trace elements, I'll look.

yeah, I know about my algae fish. I adopted him from a friend who didn't have enough room for him, not knowing what I was getting myeslf into. but he may not be a real one. I dont' know. I've had him since summer, and he's maybe grown 1/4th of an inch. He's about 3 or 4 inchs long now, but is still eating algae. He's very calm, though. He's only once gotten a little agressive, and that was when my dwarf gourami was pestering him, so it was called for.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with him now.
 
found what I could on trace elements, which wasn't much. Just comments on how tap has it, and RO doesn't, much like this thread. Some more information would be appriciated.
 
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