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Now maybe it's just me, but I've noticed a whole lot of people posting with Ram-related problems lately. I've found a lot of these problems involve keeping more than one male with one female, providing improper bariers, or having them pair off and kill everything in the tank. Now while I'm not the most experienced aquariest on FP by a long shot, I will say that I've got 3 male Blue Rams sitting in my tank, all quite happy. What I did at first was add a pair at the same time, they were quite happy, after one or two days of chasing each other, they settled down and wouldn't be seen more than a few inches away from eachother. One of these Rams died because of a Dwarf Gourami that had recently turned bad a day or two previously. So I replaced that one with 2 more to share the agression of of the surviving Ram, being that it would likely react teritorialy to new fish. So far in the week or two after adding them I've seen lots of charging and bluffing, but no fins have been nipped in the process, and the older Blue Ram is only occasionaly chasing the other two.

My advice from this experience to people wanting to have Blue Rams to a tank would firstly be to either get all males at the same time, if you must add new ones add 2 new for every 1 old ram. Next I would say make it all males, or a male and a female, possibly all female if added at the same time, but i have no experience with this. If you add a male and a female however, they should have the tank to themselves if they pair off, because its likely they'll try to kill everything else. Additionaly I'de say try to add juvenille Rams as an additional precaution. Next I would reccomend that in a community tank, rams should be added later on, after all the peacefull fish are established.

Anyhow, thats my two bits in on Rams from what I've seen, I hope this helps someone avoid problems with adding these guys to their tank. And yes, they are worth the trouble.

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-07-28 15:20][/span]

Rams are worth the trouble... but I feel that they 'require people to really want them long-term' because of their temperament and difficulty to breed. Other dwarf cichlids offer more and this is when rams have problems remaining popular long-term.

Yes, there are a couple nicer looking dwarf cichlids, personaly i've found the water parameters for them or their behaviour puts them out of the range of community fish. The possible exception i think is kribs- a female krib looks great and it won't mess up a community tank either on its own. Some angels look very nice as well, personaly I don't see it as an 'either or' thing. With male rams though, I've found it possible to add a pair of males to a well-established tank, so long as they are the same size and added at the same time, without any problems with temperment. Basicaly most people who have problems add the rams at different times, or mix males and females.

Right now I'm basicaly working on a community tank centered around dwarf cichlids, with a few other smaller fish thrown in to add depth. The end goal for my 33 gal in a year or so looks something like: 3 blue rams, 1 female krib, 1 angel (gold viel, silver, maybe an altum look-alike), 1 albino bristlenose, 12 cardinal tetras (give or take a few), and a whole mess of plants. I'de call it aiming for an amazonian tank, but i'm not going to get rid of that krib any time soon

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-07-29 13:58][/span]

The only way I got my Gold Ram to quit eating her eggs was by adding another pair to the tank (20L). When I see wigglers, I put the other pair in a tank right beside the other so the fish can see each other. I don't know if I would have had to put the pair back in because I sold the pairs. I do have a tank of there fry together now and I noticed one of the males is turning dominate and showing color...the others are still silvery. Later