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Some time in the middle of the night my fry dissapeared at about 3 days old. Not sure what happened but every last one was gone without a trace. The extra male ram was moved to my 90g and is alot less stressed out, I added lots of floating plants and more mosses, and lowered the flow rate on the ram tank. Once again the male and female blue(especially the male) are guarding around 100 eggs laid in the curve of the driftwood next to the moss covered rocks. They don't seem quite as protective this time with only the 3 guppies sharing their tank. We'll see how far their 2nd attempt gets them.

Good luck, Sham! Many cichlids will require a couple of spawns to "get it right".

I know that I had a female discus had a problem, she would pick up an egg or a wriggler to put it back in place then swallow instead of spit...

Eventually, I figured out that it was best to take her out of the tank after a spawn!



__________
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researched from Steven Wright

Goodluck with your Ram breeding, but i would leave them on their own & remove the Guppy's aswell.

Prepair some Infusoria & Live Brine Shrimp for the fry & Goodluck once again.


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Last time the female was very good about taking care of the eggs and wrigglers. It was when they became freeswimming that I think some got killed while the rams were trying to keep them all together. Especially if I fed the tank and the rams left their fry long enough that the fry got scattered. Then the rams sort of panicked about it. There was still several dozen fry left though and then they were gone one morning.

I left the guppies because first I have nowhere else to put them. The male guppies are in my 90g and the 3 female snakeskins that started my little breeding group are in the ram tank. No store wants just female guppies and if I stuck them in the 90g I'd have more guppies than I know what to do with. I also think the guppies help keep the rams on task. They protect their eggs and fry more with other fish in the tank and seem to feel safer that there are other fish swimming about. The guppies don't even notice the eggs and showed no interest in eating fry unlike the other male ram that was in the tank.

Hopefully this time they can accomplish raising the fry to the point they aren't bite sized anymore.

The ram eggs are now wrigglers and the rams have moved them to a different part of the driftwood. They always move them when they hatch. The guppies still don't seem to know there's anything there and the male ram is still gaurding while the female mostly just chases guppies around in circles.

I can see the female chasing the guppies!

My first ram spawn was in a tank with a pair of angels. After the spawn and hatch the rams had the angels in the corner of the tank and parallel to the water!



__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

Fry are freeswimming now and the male is keeping them collected over the driftwood. So far the guppies have swam right by the fry to grab food without eating any. Although the male ram goes a bit spastic and chases the guppies all over the place. He's even decided to ban the female and has her hiding behind a rock under the plants. She doesn't seem to be in any danger so long as she doesn't go wandering out near the driftwood so for now I'm leaving her there.

All ram fry are gone again and I know there was plenty of infusoria in the tank. I did water tests and didn't find anything terribly wrong. Ammonia/nitrite:0, nitrates alittle over 5ppm, ph dropped more than I thought and was below testable on my kit(6.0), 3dkh. Probably a bit much on the peat moss for such a small tank but I know peat doesn't drop the ph below 5.0 and they were born in that water so I'm not sure if that's the problem. I'm going to start adding a small amount of our tapwater which tests 18dkh and 8.4ph to buffer it some.
Other thoughts I had was that the fry scattered while the rams were resting last night and either got sucked into the filter or eaten by the guppies. But when they wandered away from the male ram during the day they mostly just sank and weren't pulled toward the filters and the guppies swam by the fry eating food without touching them so I don't know. I'm going to completely remove the hob instead of just slowing it down(nowhere for the purigen then) and add a sponge filter but should I keep the internal filter(adjusts between 2-40gph)? Or maybe the male ram just suddenly decided to eat them...

Sounds like a combination of things are going on. I'd add the sponge filter (leave the HOB for a week or so until the sponge has time to collect bacteria). Remove all other fish and see what happens. Female guppies are bad about eating fry. I used to raise guppies and you never knew if and when they'd eat their own fry. I've got a friend that has raised one batch of fry successfully. He ended up getting some nylon window screen and building a frame out of 1/2" pvc and covering it with the screen. Once the fry became free swimming he inserted the screen with the parents on one side and fry on the other.