Balloon and standard German ram spawn

[emilygupps]

My balloon male just spawned with my regular German ram female! Didn't think that would be possible but I'm excited to see the results!

[emilygupps]

And the eggs are gone

[Andy Sager]

All the rams are a morph ( either color or form) from wild blue rams ( commonly referred to as German Blue Rams as they were identified by a German collector) so it shouldn't be surprising that you had 2 different morphs spawn together. Only the BLUE is found in nature. The rest are man developed. Don't worry, if they spawned once together, as long as you keep the parameters correct, they will do it again.

Hope this helps.

[emilygupps]

That does help, thanks

[emilygupps]

Well! I have wiggles!! From an other gbr pain that I didn't even know was spawning

[Andy Sager]

Yeah, that's rams for ya. They like their privacy when it comes to breeding.

Good luck with the fry. Keep us posted.

[emilygupps]

Originally Posted by Andy Sager

Yeah, that's rams for ya. They like their privacy when it comes to breeding.

Good luck with the fry. Keep us posted.

Andy, what happens when half of a breeding pair dies? Will the surviving one choose a new mate?

[emilygupps]

Also, all the eggs if the second batch are gone. And the balloon ram male from the first batch is dead. My fish are dropping like hot cakes. Only the hardy little danios are untouched. And weirdly the khuli loaches are doing great.

Are the khulis eating the eggs? The parents chase the other rams away but completely ignore any other species of fish.

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by emilygupps

Andy, what happens when half of a breeding pair dies? Will the surviving one choose a new mate?

Yes, if the mate is a suitable mate for the survivor.

Originally Posted by emilygupps

Also, all the eggs if the second batch are gone. And the balloon ram male from the first batch is dead. My fish are dropping like hot cakes. Only the hardy little danios are untouched. And weirdly the khuli loaches are doing great.

Are the khulis eating the eggs? The parents chase the other rams away but completely ignore any other species of fish.

Rams are notorious egg eaters which is why many people don;t have good luck letting the parents raise the fry. If you want to be sure, you will be better off artificially hatching the eggs and raising the fry yourself.
I had better luck with my rams raising their fry when they were in tanks by themselves. Them and Kribenses had the back corners of my hatcheries so they would be out of the paths of people working in the room.
Your first job is to determine why your fish are dying. That may be the cause of the whole situation.

Hope this helps

[emilygupps]

The night before last we noticed the veil angel was twitching in the corner and ignoring the brine shrimp every one else was enjoying so we did a quick test and found the ammonia was 0.25 so we changed %25 of the water in the 180 right away and added a third filter last night. The angel fish died yesterday in the hospital qt, and I noticed the balloon ram stuck to the filter around dinner time but he was still alive so we put him in the hospital tank to wait while I got some water freezing. He died before I could euthanize him.

[emilygupps]

Just tested our levels again and it was 0.45ppm. So did an other big water change but didn't vacuum the substrate. Wondering if that was the problem before.

Filtration: 2 marine land emperor400 hob, fluvul 1000 canister we added the canister yesterday. We have been battling algae because of the natural light we've been using to compensate for the lack of adequate light for the plants. Snails have been our friends.

Led lights not sure of the brand but we are also expecting some custom ones to come in the next few days. It has lots of plants and co2.

Stock list:
5 baby angels (quarter size and smaller)
4 rams, 2 female one male and one I'm not sure of
8 danios
8 khuli loaches
12 narite snails
4 Amano shrimp

Ideas?

:

[elephantnose]

Test your nitrites. Rams are very sensitive to these. I've lost 4 rams in one day. Two were due to wounds but the other two had no visible wounds. I tested my water and everything was okay except I had nitrites .5. I'm pretty sure this was the culprit of the two deaths.

[emilygupps]

Nitrates are 20
Nitrites 0
Ph 8
Gh180
Kh180
Ammonia 0 finally!

Yesterday the ammonia was .45 again so we changed %50 water and I ran I lfs and bought prime. It's weird hoe fast it works! As soon as I dumped the first capful into the tank all the fish swam in to the conditioner. I added two extra cap fulls for good measure (bottle said it was safe to use up to three times recommended dose which is 3 caps for us so a total of 5 went in) and every one was so much more active and ate well.

Did I dodge a bullet or is this just a band aide?

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by emilygupps

Nitrates are 20
Nitrites 0
Ph 8
Gh180
Kh180
Ammonia 0 finally!

Yesterday the ammonia was .45 again so we changed %50 water and I ran I lfs and bought prime. It's weird hoe fast it works! As soon as I dumped the first capful into the tank all the fish swam in to the conditioner. I added two extra cap fulls for good measure (bottle said it was safe to use up to three times recommended dose which is 3 caps for us so a total of 5 went in) and every one was so much more active and ate well.

Did I dodge a bullet or is this just a band aide?

I think this is an indication of an environmental issue with either your tank or your source water. If the fish reacted well to the water change then went "south" and then reacted good to the addition of PRIME, I would be doing some cleaning of the gravel bed at least once a week(possibly twice a week in the beginning) as there must be a collection of detritis in the gravel bed. You just need to not do massive cleaning at one time so as to not destroy the bacteria bed. Clean a small section of the gravel bed every 3 or 4 days until you have covered the entired tank then get used to vacuuming a section of gravel at each water change. This will eliminate the collection of detritis causing the water to foul. If the problem persists, your filtering is too small for you fish load and you will either need to upgrade the filter or remove some of the fish stock.

Hope this helps

[emilygupps]

Andy, I have sand. How do I vacuum the sand? Is there a trick?

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by emilygupps

Andy, I have sand. How do I vacuum the sand? Is there a trick?

Yes there is a trick but magicians never reveal their tricks.

Take a stick, carefully and slowly dig into a small section of the sand in a circular motion and see if you get brown stuff coming up. If you do, let it settle and then use a siphon hose to vacuum it up. If you don;t, check other areas the same way. If you still don;t get high amounts of brown, then the problem is not in your sand bed and it's time to look at the fish stock vs filter issue.

And poof, ( a screen of smoke appears and the magician vanishes! lol we need an emoticon for that here. lol )

[emilygupps]

So, we've tried to siphon it up, I have white sand and I can see the brown settling in it, but I end up sucking all the sand up. It's so frustrating. I'll try again. Is it possible to change the water too often?

[Andy Sager]

Here's a crazy thought, is it possible your cat is peeing in the tank every few days? That would account for the rise in ammonia without the addition of new fish. Crazier things have happened. I had a customer who lost his tank repeatedly after his maid was in the house. We determined that his air pump was picking up the ammonia from the solution she was using to wash the floor. I had him use a charcoal bed under the pump intake when she came and that stopped the losses. Just something to think about.

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by emilygupps

So, we've tried to siphon it up, I have white sand and I can see the brown settling in it, but I end up sucking all the sand up. It's so frustrating. I'll try again. Is it possible to change the water too often?

That's up for debate. I think it is. What you can do then is siphon up a small area of sand into a bucket and gently agitate the sand while slowly running water in the bucket until the water runs clean then replace the cleaned sand back into the tank. You don;t want to do large areas as your plants need the nutrients the detritis contains.

[emilygupps]

He has never peed outside of the box, but the charcoal idea might work.

Does algae produce ammonia? We have an algae problem while we get the co2/lighting and minerals all balanced. Our new lights just got here and we got a new diffuser for the co2.