9
My experience with blue rams
Mikrogeophagus ramirezi
(Myers and Harry, 1948) Meulengracht-Madsen, 1968)
By Jason Lee
Canberra and District Aquarium Society
August 2010
For ease of reference and reading we have provided a contents article
For ease of reference and reading we have provided a contents for this for this article
New Fish!
New Fish!
Blue rams, Names
Blue rams, Names
Origin
Origin
Water parameters
Water parameters
Sexing
Sexing few spawns
The first
The third spawn
The first few spawns
The third spawn development
Photographs of fry
Photographs of fry development
Epilogue
References
pg 9 Pg 5
pg 10 pg 6
pg 11 - 12
pg 7 - 9
pg 13
pg 9
pg 14
pg 15 pg 10
pg 16 -pg 11
18
pg
pg 19 - 2712 - 14
pg 27pg 15 - 23
- 29
pg 30
New fish!
On Saturday 10 April 2010 I was in Petbarn and noticed that they had some nice looking
blue rams at a good price. I had never had blue rams before but had been recently reading up on them with the intention of getting some for a new (second-hand) Aqua One
620T tank (130 litre) that I had just got.
I picked out what I thought were one of each sex that looked healthy to me. The male
was about 5 cm and the female about 4 cm.
Because the 620T was only just beginning its second week of cycling, I didn't think it
would be safe to put them into that. Instead, I put them into my well-established 22-litre
shrimp tank. The shrimp tank had been going for a few years and only had lots of cherry
shrimp, an Otocinclus, java moss, a couple of other mosses, some pearl weed, etcetera.
The water was soft, slightly acid; and the temperature was around 26 degrees Celsius.
There was lots of what looked like some sort of very small daphnia, probably rotifers. I
was hoping that the rams wouldn't eat too many of the baby shrimp as some berried
cherries were beginning to release their eggs (tiny shrimp were appearing).
Anyway, I put the rams in on Saturday. On Monday I noticed a bulging ovipositor on the
female. Great! I thought. I must have sexed correctly.
On Tuesday the 13th when I got home from work around 1830, the pair had dug a pit at
the back of the middle of the tank and was beginning to spawn! I ended up with my face
glued to the front of the tank for the next couple of hours. I had my camera and took
heaps of photos and over half an hour of video!