can you crowd blue rams?

[AverageWhiteBloke]

Just wondering, I fancy another go with these. Can you put a few of them in a 30 gall or just stick to one pair?

 

[Maurits]

If you make sure you give them enough hiding space and don't over crowd your tank with other fish you can do 2 pairs.

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

Thanks, would adding more females to males improve or worsen the situation?

 

[Humbert]

1. agree with 2 pairs max in 30 gals, as said above
2. No, adding more females woul not improve the situation.
after pairs are formed, the extra females will get chased by the 'official wives' and they will get stressed to the point where they might die.
at the same time, the wives will still quarrel as expected, so no advantage whatsoever.
males will quarrel with each other, they rarely have a go at females, perhaps when spawning, but otherwise their main business is with males.

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

Thanks for the advice. I've usually kept these as single pairs before but something has generally went wrong with spawning. It was as if one was blaming the other for the missing fry which undoubtedly would have been predation by other community fish or getting sucked into the filter. I always seemed to end up with a pair that just didn't get along.

I'll try the two pair method and see how I get on. Just softening my water down a bit at the minute. I did some TDS tests and found my water to be up in the 250's. It comes out the tap at about 15ppm. Just shows, even with a 50% water change weekly stuff still builds up. Going to do some 50% bi-weekly changes.

 

[Andy Thurston]

Careful with your tap water most of the time mine comes out at 70 tds but the other day it stank of chlorine and had a tds of 220. Im glad i checked before pouring it into the shrimp tank

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

How sensitive are Blue Rams to hardness? I hear some imported from Europe are kept in hardish water. Others tell me they’re in Discus territory.