yhbae
Aquarium Advice Activist
Madame_X said:I've read that rams may be aggressive towards other bottom feeders since that is the part of the tank they inhabit. That said, mine have never shown any aggression toward any other fish except each other (well, one of mine would "ram" the gourami if he spent too much time in his space but the other one couldn't have cared less).
Neither ram has ever bothered my pleco. They look at her curiously sometimes as if trying to figure out her odd behavior, but that's about it. And my marble hatchets hang out with the rams all the time (which is odd in itself since they are supposed to be mid-top tank dwellers).
I'm curious, though. Those of you who say your rams are shy and hide a lot--do you have Bolivian Rams or German (blue or gold) Rams? My Bolivian Rams are anything but shy. They rarely hide unless something startles them and are very curious. One of mine is downright attention hungry. If you notice, there is hardly a picture in my gallery without a ram in it. That's because if I go near the tank, they swim over and try to be the center of attention!
For the brief period when I had the gold rams, I could definitely see that they were more timid. However, after the first one died, the second one started behaving more like the Bolivians (which made it even more sad when he started displaying symptoms of illness).
One of my male blue ram is quite aggressive - it chases after the other smaller male ram and also chases harlequin rasboras and platy fries. No fishes ever got hurt, but he seems to have cut himself a territory, which is just under the power filter. Volume-wise, he claimed about 1/4 of the tank... (top right side of the tank). This one doesn't stay at the bottom very much.
He was trying to scare one of the adult platy by trying to chase but the platy pretty much ignored him... After that, he never tried to chase adult platies again...
He pecked on the little bristlenose pl*cos at the begining but never touched them again.
One nice side-effect is that my rasboras never schooled before, but after the introduction of rams, they school pretty much all the time!