Rams Choice of Food

[Madame_X]

I've tried feeding my rams a variety of different foods but they don't seem to like many of the things I've offered up. They spit out the flake that I have and show no interest whatsoever in any of the frozen foods I've tried to give them such as daphnia, "Omnivore Cube" (which made a mess of the tank, by the way) and bloodworms.

They do seem to like the baby cichlid pellets I've given them but they float. These guys will not eat at the top of the tank, so these don't work out very well (I might try soaking them).

Their food of choice? The algae wafers I bought for my pleco!

Is this okay? As long as they're eating, I shouldn't be too worried, right? I've been breaking one in half and putting a piece in both of their "territories" to eat at their leisure. Anything they don't finish, the pleco takes care of.

 

[shawmutt]

If I did find rams, I would feed them the same thing I feed the rest of my black water tank--Freeze dried blood worms and my fish food called "New life spectrum small fish formula." The food is little granules that sink rather quickly. I would think, looking at my spirulina flakes and algae wafers, that since they have protein they would be ok--don't take my word for it though. Maybe you could try brine shrimp. It might be that these guys were caught in the wild and need to be weaned off of live food.

HTH!

 

[vega]

I have 2 Bolivian ram and 2 golden ram.

the bolivian are too shy to go to the surface to feed.usually it wait the food to drop to their 'eye level' before to go for the chase.

Whereas the golden usually when to the surface the moment they saw me walking near the tank.

For balance diet reason, I daily feed them with cocktail of food inc frozen bloodworm, frozen brine srimpt, std fish pallet and dried daphnia and they gladly took all of them.

oh! they also take the wafer that suppose for my cory.

As i dont know what is ur tank setup, what i can suggest is get the tank lots of plant (live or plastic doesnt really matter) as ram are very 'shy' (or coward). nex is minimise your tank's water flow if your are using power head in ur tank as ram require tank with little water movement.

Once your have the desirable environment for them, just feed them as normally as you would with other fish. Do not over-feed the potion as unlike most tetra, ram do scanvage from the bottom.

And be patient!!! Give the ram time to know you

 

[Madame_X]

Hmmm... those don't sound like MY rams.

I had two gold rams in addition to my two Bolivians. The gold rams did not do well (I lost one within a week and another the following week). However, when I had all four it was the golds who were shy. The Bolivians set up territory right away and are not the least bit shy. If I stick my hand in the tank, they will swim right up to it to see what I'm doing.

After the first gold ram died, the second one started hanging out with the Bolivians and even started picking up their personality. After a few days of being chased by the Bolivians, he said "Enough!" and started chasing THEM! It was so cute as he was about 1/3 smaller than them. I was sad when he came down with the same symptoms as the first one.

As for their environment, they are in a fairly heavily planted 30 gallon cube with my bristlenose pleco and they seem quite content. They just seem to be picky eaters.

I'll try frozen or live brine shrimp--the only thing I haven't tried yet! But as long as they're eating those algae wafers, I won't worry about them too much.

Thanks for the suggestions...