sick blue ram

[SeymourFRESH]

well, i got 4 blue rams 2 males and 2 females. we recently added a new piece of driftwood and made a little cave with it, and the rams loved it. within the past few days however, i noticed one of the males would just stay over by the cave, all the time. the fish looked good, but it would usually just remain stationary

well today, i finally saw it come out to the front, and it looked really sick. it's color was fading, it was acting lethargic, and it was mainly staying toward the bottom. it kept swimming along the bottom and slightly cocking itself to the side, pretty much looks like it's on its death bed

i have no idea where this came from or what could be wrong with it, but i did a water test and all my paremeters are fine:
pH: 7.2
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 10

any ideas what could have happened here, guys?

 

[Jchillin]

This is not uncommon and there is nothing that you have done. Sudden unexplained illness and premature demise come part and parcel with GBR's. The sad news is, this is usually fatal. All I can recommend is keep an eye on him and hope for the best.

 

[Meredith]

Yes, it does seem to be hit and miss sometimes with gbrs.
I am sure its nothing you did, and what ever you try to save him may not work, but there are a couple things you can try that may or may not help but certainly wont hurt.
Try doing a pwc today and tomorrow. NOthing major, just 10 or 20%.If he still is looking poorly you could try to qt him and dosing some melafix.
Good luck to you

 

[SeymourFRESH]

well, it died. doesn't really surprise me but this just sucks because it came out of nowhere. this only leads me to so many more questions:

1) does this premature death have anything to do with that hormone that's injected into them?
2) how are the other rams affected by this fish's death?
3) upon taking our new piece of driftwood out, i noticed what looks like fungus growing on the back side of it, so they must have laid eggs and they never hatched. how harmful is this fungus to my fish?

 

[Meredith]

I am really sorry. Its probably a number of things with the rams. It could be hormones, or just the stress of being captured/ moved. I hope the rest of your fish make it. The fungus on the wood I don't think will harm your fish. Just scrub it off and do a water change.

 

[Jchillin]

Sorry to hear about your Ram...as I said earlier, it had nothing at all to do with anything on your end. That was the singular reason I began researching the German Blue Rams and started the thread.

Your surviving Rams may be fine...from what I seen so far, if one doesn't make it the others will. The odds are in your favor.

 

[maxwell1295]

How new is the driftwood? The reason I ask is because I think I just lost 2 Rams recently and the only thing I can attribute it to is a drop in pH due to adding driftwood to the tank. My pH was regularly in the 6.4-6.6 range. Adding driftwood took it down to 6.0 (or less since that's as low as the AP kit will read). The other fish in the tank handled it well, but my female Ram started to show signs of stress and died shortly thereafter. That's when the male did the same. I'm not sure if it was the pH drop or him losing his mate that caused him to die.

I'm just going to chalk it up to my own stupidity for not checking the pH sooner. Had I done that, I might still have both fish.

 

[SeymourFRESH]

ehh it only brought my pH down to 7.2, before that it was only like 7.3-7.4 or so

we pretty much added that new piece a week before it died