Black Ram Sick or Injured?

[B1gJ4k3]

For whatever reason, my two breeding pairs of black rams have decided that they hate each other. In both cases, the male is being really aggressive with the female and chasing her all over the tank. Last week I separated one pair. This week, I hadn't seen the other pair's female, but assumed she was tending to eggs/wrigglers as they had just spawned. But, yesterday, she finally came out and I saw the male chasing her around as well. I pulled her to a different tank as well.

Now that she's not running away from the male, I can see some kind of white, discolored areas on her head and along her dorsal fin. Her tail also seems a bit ragged with white/translucent area at the tip. I don't really know what to make of it. Could she be sick or would it be the result of injuries from the male? What should be my course of action here?

Water parameters attached. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Temperature is 82. Ammonia is 0

[Fish Folk]

Looks like maybe hole in head disease. My Acaras are susceptible to that, especially when under stress. Sorry to see / hear. Lovely Rams!

Maybe a touch of bacterial infection on fin edges. I’d water change and separate at least.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Fish Folk

[Colu]

Looks like an injury to me possible swim into something trying to get away from the male if your still noticing aggression I would separate  you could add a small amount of aquarium salt 1 table spoon for 3 gallon to help to provent any secondary bacterial or fungal infections and monitor

[B1gJ4k3]

Posting for posterity, just in case anyone else has a similar issue. I ended up separating the pair and treating the female with ParaCleanse and a bit of salt. She is currently in a planted tank, so I didn't want to go too crazy with the salt. I think I did two tablespoons for her ten gallon tank (so 1 tablespoon/5 gallons).

She's looking a lot better and the spot on her head is nearly gone and her tail has returned to normal. Fingers crossed that I'll be able to introduce her back to the male without any issues...

[Cory]

@B1gJ4k3 For completeness what were the water parameters in the new tank? As I just saw this, my first thought is the water from the test strip looks to be very low in pH and the water may have "crashed" and was gonna recommend getting the pH up to see if that perked the fish back up.

[B1gJ4k3]

Thanks for weighing in, @Cory. To be perfectly honest, I have not found the test strips to be very accurate, especially when it comes to pH, at least the bottle that I received in June of last year. Even on my livebearer and cichlid tanks where I used crushed coral, it doesn't seem to register much above about 6.8. I've also found nitrates to read quite a bit lower than other tests as well. Again, could just be the batch I received. I have no doubt that others have good luck with them, but I usually take the results from my strips with a fairly big grain of salt.

In either case, I posted the picture of the strip because I was too lazy to write out parameters and as a way to show that everything was pretty much within normal ranges. The two tanks have similar substrate, hardscape and plant life between them and the pH on both reads 6.8-7.0 on an API test. Obviously my water is pretty soft, but my pH stays pretty steady.

Edited April 19, 2022 by B1gJ4k3