Tank Talk Magazine September 2010 | Page 11

11 Origin As I just mentioned, rams come from the drainage of the Orinoco river in the countries of Venezuela and Colombia. They are not Amazon fish. (As another aside, the Amazon and Orinoco basins are connected by a natural canal called the Casiquiare river.) Here is a map of the Orinoco river basin from Wikipedia: Venezuela is the country to the east and Colombia is to the west. Rams come from Orinoco tributaries in the tropical grassland savannahs called Llanos in Spanish. The weather is hot all year (> 25 degrees C), with extremes in rainfall: a wet season and a dry season. In the dry season, these tributaries may slow to a trickle, dry up, or form stagnant acid pools. In the wet season from May to October these grasslands turn into temporary swamps and wetlands. It‘s hot all year round. So, take these as a cue for water parameters.