German Ram eggs - help!

It'sJames

On my way to bed last night I checked in on my tank, and quite to my suprise, there was a batch of eggs from the German Rams I bought about two weeks ago. The male has been carefully guarding them from the platies, and switches off with the female occasionally. I'm not exactly sure when they spawned, but I'm thinking it was late on Wednesday. Is there anything I can do to make the chances that the eggs survive any higher? What should I feed the fry if they hatch? Should I move them to their own tank, or remove the other fish from the tank the eggs are already in? I've never had any fish lay eggs before, so I'm a bit clueless. I'm doing lots of reading online, but I thought I'd put this up and see if I could get a little extra help.

iamntbatman

I've never bred rams before, but from what I understand it's a fairly similar experience to breeding Kribensis, so I can give you my experience there.

Like kribs, rams are supposed to be excellent parents and should do a good job of guarding the eggs. However, if you've got snails or plecos or anything similar, you might want to remove them as they could sneak up and eat the eggs during the night. Once the eggs hatch it will be a little while before the fry are free-swimming; during this stage they just feed off of their attached yolk sacs. After they become free swimming, the parents will lead them on little expeditions around the tank to graze. My kribs did an excellent job of keeping the cories, danios and gourami at bay so I lost few fry. Depending on how insistent the platies are about eating the fry, you may have to remove them or the adult rams could really do some damage. I fed my young fry a finely ground mixture of flake, algae wafers and shrimp pellets, ground up with the handle of an exacto knife in a shotglass as a makeshift mortar and pestle. I then used an eyedropper to add some water to the mixture, swirled it around to mix it evenly, then sucked it up and squirted it at the fry. As they grew I switched over to increasingly more coarsely ground flake.

If any of this doesn't apply to breeding rams, please feel free to point it out!

It'sJames

Most of the eggs have turned white now, which I assume is from fungus and will prevent them from hatching. I didn't have any few for them anyways, and I don't know if I could even get any before they would hatch. I am going to order some microworms anyways, and I'll keep reading up so I can be ready to care for the eggs next time. I hope they spawn again!

aquadude

IF the rams are white it could just be them getting their color.Also for next time i suggest you buy some sort of a breeding tank.you should also search it on google images.

iamntbatman

The eggs turned white, not the fish. They could have turned white either because they simply became infected with fungus or because they were never fertilized in the first place. There's really not a lot you can do to take care of the eggs; really all they need is water movement but the parents usually take care of that themselves.

As far as those breeding traps go...definitely not at all useful for breeding rams.