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any advice on Blue Rams please. i have had an aquarium for three years and am considering a dwarf gourami or blue ram. i havent had much luck with the gourami so i thought i would give the ram a try when i saw some little one inch juveniles at the LFS today. would they go with Harlequin Rasboras, Bandit Corydoras and/or Pygmy Corydoras???

kj fishy-finn <*)))><
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Yes they should get along fine with cories and rasboras. The only time they aren't quite peaceful is if you get a breeding pair and don't have enough tank space for them to keep the other fish out of their territory.

Most important thing with rams is to acclimate very slowly and also keep your nitrates low. Most of the rams I've lost were because of acclimating too quickly. Moving them from tank to tank or bringing them home and just floating the bag before tossing them in is pretty much guranteed to cause problems. Rams are the only fish that I spend more than 15mins acclimating and it can take an hour for me to get them into my tanks. After they have adjusted to your water parameters they can seem fairly hardy and I had a pair survive quite a swing in ph with no noticeable effects. They can be sensitive to water quality though so make sure to keep on top of water changes.

i was planning on getting only one. and in the profile of them i think it said something about them being sensitive to dechlor when you dechlorinate water after water change. i pour in water after changing it and then add the dechlor and stir it around. is this true??? and are they really that shy or do they get over their shyness???

kj fishy-finn <*)))><
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Mine aren't shy at all. They'll come up and beg for food all the time. They also attack my arms when I'm working in the tank.

I haven't heard any problems with dechlorinators so long as you are dechlorinating and mixing it around before you add the water to the tank. I use RO water with buffers and minerals added back in so no chlorine to worry about. Although I did move an extra male I had to a community tank where I use tapwater and prime water conditioner. No problems with him.

what do you mean by "attack"??? bad attacking or just friendly playing.

are they the kind of fish that will come up and eat out of your hands???

kj fishy-finn <*)))><
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To them it's a bad attack and they want you out of their territory but a ram is way too small to do any harm. At worst they can pull on the hair on your arm and be annoying. A lone ram probably isn't bad but a breeding pair can be quite annoying when your replanting a tank or moving things around. I've seen a few shy rams at stores in display tanks but they probably have tons of people walking by and scaring them. In my own tanks my rams have always been very bold.

They are a bit cautious about taking food directly from your hand and prefer to hang around only about 1inch away waiting for you to let go. If you hold still and have something yummy mine will usually come take it. Occasionally I feed them frozen squid chunks by hand.