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we bought a pair of rams on sunday, they have settled into the community tank really well. they seemed to be spending a lot of time in and around the sword plant and today i noticed that they were chasing off any other fish and seemingly cleaning and fanning the plant.
when i looked one of the leaves is covered in eggs.

this is our 1st batch of eggs so i need as much advise as possible on what to look out for and what i should do.
also any timescale on the eggs hatching and what the chances of successfully raising any fry are.

thanks in advance

Hi there,
first of all, congratulations on your first eggs!

Eggs , if viable,will hatch in approximately 48 hours,
and will take about 3-5 days to become free swimming,
depending on the temperature in your tank.

I am unsure which fish you have in your tank,
but fry are unlikely to survive in a community tank,
espescially if you have fish like loaches, catfish, or plecos, who will gladly march in and feast on caviar and fry!

If you remove the eggs and care for them yourselves, assuming they are viable (golden yellow as opposed to white), then your hatch rate and success rate could be as much as 70% or greater.


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Hi hembo666,

I have also had my first batch of eggs in a community tank this week. My Severums laid over 500 eggs Saturday and most of them hatched this morning. Then, this afternoon, the parents moved all the hatchlings from the flat rock where the eggs were laid to a piece of wood and some babies were lost in the move so I "saved" 1/3 of them and put them in a 20g nursery tank. I've heard that the parents sometimes get upset if you take them all away and fight the other fish (dont know how true that is) so I left them 2/3 of the brood, also to see how well they'll manage raising them.

I've noticed however that the fry left with the parents seem much more vigorous than those in the nursery. I'm anxious to compare both groups when they get a little older. As this is my first experience as well, I'm trying things out to see what will be best.

I must mention that my Severum parents are MUCH bigger than any of the other fish in the tank so there might be fewer attempts on the offspring by bloodthirsty neighbours. Your rams might have more problems keeping the little ones from becoming food.

I've also read that leaving a dim "night light" on helps against night predation.

I'd really like to know how your hatchlings turn out, as well as what problems, solutions and joys you encounter!

Cheers and good luck,

Daphnis

hi to give an idea of tankmates its the 260l tank in my profile, the denisoni anr around 4 inch and the loach are around 3 inch so would certainly consider fry as food and would be a atch for 2 small rams to try adn defend against them.
the eggs are a creamy colour so not sure if they are viable or not.
if i do remove some of them how do i care for them? i have a 10l hospital tank i could use for some fry.

Hi there,
to care for eggs you need 2 things in the tank.
A bubbler, to keep the water flowing round the eggs to oxygenate them, and some anti fungal medicine.
Methylene Blue, Pimafix, pretty much anything like that
will do.
Creamy color seems viable to me. You would know what I mean by white if you see white eggs in the bunch.
Eggs are pretty easy to hatch yourself, if you wanted to try.
I have hatched many batches of angelfish fry in a sandwich container floating in the tank with an air stone and some pimafix.


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too late this time, all the eggs had gone when i got back from work. hopefully there will be more in the future that i can try and rear myself or i might swap that pair with the gold rams in the 15g and let them try again in there.

Sorry you lost them all! But on the bright side of things, if they spawned once, they'll do it again.

Good luck.

Daphnis

Item one : if you're looking for an antifungal medication that will work well, try Tetra FungiStop - I use it with my Panda Cory eggs and it works fine.

Item two : if you transfer the eggs to be reared artificailly, make sure that they're not exposed to atmospheric air when transferred.

Item three : if these Rams are ramirezi, keep the eggs and fry warm! 84 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature you should be looking at. If they're altispinosa (Bolivian Rams), then once the eggs have hatched, they can be brought down gently to 78 for rearing, but ramirezi need it warm - it's not overdoing it to take ramirezi fry to 86 degrees for the first 3 weeks or so of life.

Item four : if you've a spare container of about 2 gallons capacity, now's the time to fire up a Brine Shrimp hatchery! Not only will your fry munch on these with gusto and grow at a rate of knots, but the surplus will be good food for the adult fishes too.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

thanks for the help so far, and there is a very helpful artical on breeding rams in this months pfk mkagazine.
how long before i can expect to see another attempt from the same pair of rams?

Feed them live Bloodworm and Daphnia for the next couple of days and chances are they'll spawn again in about four days ... if I toss live food in with my Panda Corys, they've been known to spawn 12 hours afterwards


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

ok, update.

i have moved the gold rams from the 15g into the community tank and put the spawning pair or blue rams in there.
and after a little under 24 hours i have a ram guarding a new clutch of eggs

hopefully they will have more success in this tank.

water params-
temp-30c
ph-7
gh-10
kh-3
nitrite+ammonia-0
nitrate-10
tankmates-3 ottos.

the male ate the eggs this morning.
maybe 3rd time lucky next time

Read somewhere that they need to feel a little threatened not to eat the eggs. How 'bout putting in a gentle fish that looks threatening but won't eat the eggs itself?

Just a thought. Good luck!

Daphnis

mmm, not heard that before but might be worth a try if they continue toeat the eggs, after all if it doesnt work i have tank space to move whatever i try out again, and an understanding LFS.

any species and numbers you might suggest? i was going to try putting some shrimp in there.

Sometimes, it takes rams a couple of times to get it right. My ram pair spawned twice and the eggs disappeared then, they spawned a 3rd time and I could tell that the eggs were different by day 2. They changed color. By day 3 I could see the baby fish inside the eggs, so I moved them to a 10 gal. growout tank. That batch hatched and so has the next batch that they laid. I now have a bumload of ram fry at varying ages in my 10 gal. growout tank.

Give your pair a chance....they'll make it work.

---

~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."