Female Blue Ram Eating Free Swimming Fry

[tjd]

I have a 10g tank with two males and one female Blue Ram. They were purchased as juveniles and recently the female and dominate male have started spawning. The pair does a great job until the fry become free swimming at which point the female takes on sole responsibility for guarding the nest and starts eating the fry that swim away from it. The last time I tried removing both the males with no improvement.

I am considering one of two things this time and would appreciate some advice one way or the other:

1) Remove the female and non-dominate male once the fry are wigglers.

2) Remove the wigglers. If I do this do I still need to treat the water with an anti-fungal agent being they are hatched?

Thanks for any advice.
Tom

 

[scott]

once the eggs hatch there is no need for an anti-fungus. i have had problems with rams being bad parents. first off i would remove the "third wheel" altogether. i would either remove the eggs and hatch and rear them without the parents or remove the fry once they become free swimming. i have never tried moving fry that were still in the wriiggler state so i can't tell you anything about that. the method i prefer is to remove the fry once the are free swimming or you could always do it the other way around and remove the parents once the fry are free swimming. i do both of these things routinely and have had alot of luck raising all kinds of cichlids with a very low mortality rate. good luck

 

[tjd]

So the pair spawned again about a week ago and I removed the fry once they hatched and were wigglers. The fry have been free swiming for about three days and I am concerned about how I am feeding them.

The fry, about 60-80 are in a 10g tank with a small sponge filter that is air driven. Most of the time the fry are either at the surface or along the side of the glass. I have been feeding a combination of Liquifry and OSI Artemia Food. The water is slightly cloudy but I noticed when I add the Liquifry (about 5 drops 3 times a day) it mostly sinks to the bottom where there are no fry. I add the Artemia food dry and it spreads out on the surface where I see some of the fry going after it. So my questions are:

1) Does the Artemia food alone have enough nutrition to sustain the fry until they are large enough to eat BBS? Anyone have experience using this as a fry food?

2) Should I continue using the Liquifry as I am concerned about fouling the water too much? My Ammonia is up to 1ppm.

Tom

 

[Z Man]

I've never had any luck with the fry eating anything but live food. I start out with microworms and then switch to newly hatched BBS. If they start to die off in about 5 days, they are not getting any food.

 

[tjd]

Thanks for the advice, I ended up losing about 1/2 the fry (~40) after 3 to 5 days. The rest are going strong.

The male finally has got it figured out and is raising another brood of fry. The female is still eating the fry and I am losing some fry to her. Although, the male is doing pretty good at keeping her at the other side of the tank now.

I was surprised how quickly this batch of fry started taking BBS, within 2 days or so. Before that they seemed to be picking at some algae that was growing, or something living within the algae.

Thanks again,
Tom