My German Blue Ram just lay egg!

[andytan]

Thx Bernie. Will buy some tomor and try again.

[Aquanoob]

After a long search for the German Blue Ram, I finally got hold of a young pair in Tampines on Wednesday night. I feed them with Brine Shrimp on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, I started to find that the pair was behaving strangely but I just take it that they were still adjusting to the new tank environment and the tank mates. But to my surprise and shock, I found that they have spawned on the substrate in my jungle of H.Polysperma. They have been in my tank for only 4 days and this was the fastest record of the GBR spawning in my tank.

The pair are in my 2 feet tank together with the guppies, sae, one lonely Platy and Cory. There is no chance for me to net out the eggs for now and it is too late also. I will wait until the fry are free-swimming then I will net them out into another tank. This is my 5-6th time of GBR spawning and I am crossing my fingers that they can grow up this time.

My Male Ram:



Female: The belly is still not as red on arrival in my tank on Wednesday night, but now very red and hiding away guarding the egg.



Male again:



The Male guarding the egg. The white stuff on the substrate are the eggs

[xXXXx13]

Hey bro, congrats and all the best for this spawn.

[crabby:)]

Hi my pair of electric balloon rams just layed eggs should i seperate the egss to a seperate tank with the only the mum?or both parents? My tank has 22 tetras and 1 cory,thanks

[Aquanoob]

Just an update, the fry are free-swimming now and is on diet of bbs and powder food, will separate the fry and the parent very soon.

[Stitch]

Congrats. What powder food you gave them?

[square_87]

great breeding journal! thank you for sharing those awesome pictures!

[Aquanoob]

I am the very kiasu type, I have Liquidfry, Hikari First Bites and Oceanfree Super Baby as the powder food, and I also feed them the baby brine shrimp when possible. I try to do the best I can to make sure the fry survive their first weeks and go on to many more weeks. I like the colour and character of GBR and I will continue to keep them.

[sianxz]

Nice Rams bro, you rams look skinny. Maybe you should feed them more

[Aquanoob]

They are still very young when I bought them. I wasnt expect them to breed so fast within 4 days. And from then now, they are eating very little to chase away predators like the guppies, platy and even SAEs, so that is reason they are rather skinny. But they are very aggressive to any fish near to the fry and I have already lost 2 guppies with injury from them.

[stormhawk]

Nice spawn there Aquanoob. The cheap Rams I bought from C328 turned out to be young GBRs.

Very hard to get a pic the males are constantly fighting.

@crabby

If that is possible you should do it, or leave a weak light on at night so the female can ward off intruders. Corydoras are egg eaters and tetra are fry killers in community tanks.

[Aquanoob]

Sad to announce that I have lost the fry again. I net out the fry into a guppy tank with the water from the comm tank and also put in some moss in the water so that maybe they can feed off the micro-organism on the moss too. On Sunday, I have to go oversea on a last-minute business trip and I told my wife to feed the fry food and try to monitor the condition. Then when I came back tonight, the fry are somehow all dead and according to my wife they started to behave oddly on Monday and all were gone by today morning. Somehow it is always like this for me that I lost the fry due to unknown or uncontrollable causes. The biz trip came at a wrong time but I can't take care of the fry myself. This is like the 6-7th that the GBR spawned and I have lost the fry in days to a max of 2 weeks. I also noticed that the male ram is once again chasing the female around although it is smaller than the female. I have also net out the female ram and will feed it with brine shrimp for a week and release it into the comm tank with the male ram again and I think that they should spawn again very quickly and hopefully I will be around to take care of them.

[andytan]

Hi Aquanoob, sad to hear that you lost the whole batch of fries. By the way what did you feed the fries with? I use liquidfry for 3 to 4 days before feeding them live baby brine shrimps(newly hatched). After that its live baby brine shrimps for the next 2 to 3 weeks before frozen baby shrimps. Could not get them to eat dry food after that no matter how hard I tried but by then its quick easy as they are quick stable. Good luck next time.

[lowniu]

any special condition then it just will lay egg???

[Aquanoob]

@andytan, the food that I feed to the fry are further up the thread.
@lowniu, actually GBR do spawn readily in the tank. I keep them for quite long time, and the longer that a pair spawn in my tank is about 2-3 weeks and the fastest isn just 4 days. I keep them in a planted tank but I never check or measure on the parameter so I can't comment on the water condition they are in.

[Stitch]

How big were the baby brine shrimp when you fed them to the female ram?
My brine shrimps now are about 2 days old.
I tried on several occasions, my rams seem to be blind, cannot see the brine shrimp. Too small for the rams to spot?
I already squeezed all the brine shrimp into the tank and they are still waiting near the syringe for food? zzz.
Must I wait for the shrimps to be bigger if i am feeding the bigger rams?

Sad to announce that I have lost the fry again. I net out the fry into a guppy tank with the water from the comm tank and also put in some moss in the water so that maybe they can feed off the micro-organism on the moss too. On Sunday, I have to go oversea on a last-minute business trip and I told my wife to feed the fry food and try to monitor the condition. Then when I came back tonight, the fry are somehow all dead and according to my wife they started to behave oddly on Monday and all were gone by today morning. Somehow it is always like this for me that I lost the fry due to unknown or uncontrollable causes. The biz trip came at a wrong time but I can't take care of the fry myself. This is like the 6-7th that the GBR spawned and I have lost the fry in days to a max of 2 weeks. I also noticed that the male ram is once again chasing the female around although it is smaller than the female. I have also net out the female ram and will feed it with brine shrimp for a week and release it into the comm tank with the male ram again and I think that they should spawn again very quickly and hopefully I will be around to take care of them.

[stormhawk]

The fry will ignore the small foods at a certain age and prefer larger food items like worms and such. Adult Rams should eat the adult brine shrimp right off the bat if they are hungry. Mine takes anything.

[Stitch]

@Stormhawk, my brine shrimp now is about the size of a dust particle. So that means it is too small for the adult ram? So I should wait till the brine shrimps are bigger before I fed them to the adult ram? No wonder they seems blind to the baby brine shrimp now... too small to be noticed...???

[stormhawk]

That means you are using BBS aka baby brine shrimp. Try adult brine shrimp. Adult Rams will not go for tiny foods unless they are hungry. Mine occasionally ignore Moina..

[andytan]

Try frozen blood worms for the adults. They just love them. Somehow my adult rams do not like frozen brine shrimps.