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Marley
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We have little swimmers, as of tonight. This is our first spawn with our German Blue Rams. Throw me ALL of your tips and tricks. 😃

Super Exciting! I was expecting that they maybe would have eaten their eggs as they did last time and I was expecting to need to give them one more try... so this was such a fun surprise! 

5EE91F80-5BCB-4F09-BA1D-99D579FB484C.jpeg

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Congratulations! We've raised up a few hundred rams . . . but never enjoyed the pleasure of seeing them successfully raise up a brood of their own. Best wishes. Looks like the fry have source context for lots of good infusoria in there. They can probably be fed live baby brine shrimp soon. That can help their development. We found that getting them on to bbs early rather than nursing them along on infusoria, vinegar eels, etc. really helped move them over the 2-week development hump. Take care not to over feed though. They may only be able to eat 2x bbs per day each. Little bit goes a long way! Also: don't be too discouraged if the parents decide to reconstitute protein and eat them all . . . that happens. If you have another aquarium set up, you could move the parents if they start to predate on the fry. Hopefully you'll have an amazing cloud of happy Rams though! Best wishes! So beautiful . . . 

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@Fish Folk thanks so much for your response! As usual super helpful advice! Beginning breeding has been such a fun endeavor and everyone here has been so helpful! 
We have done all of our research and work alongside a local veterinarian but at the end of the day what I’m learning is that you do not fully grasp the concepts until you have the experience. Actual fry to care for and learning your breeding pair etc. 
I’m appreciative of your advice regarding feeding. We were making some decisions today on that. We just began some easy fry food and have a brine shrimp hatchery wrapped and ready for a gift from Santa to our 12 year old son (the only thing he has really requested for Christmas) ...so we wanted to hold off on that until Christmas. Now we are thinking we need to buy another brine set up really quick so we can get started before hand. I really wasn’t expecting the fry until then. 😂

We were thinking of vinegar eel but sounds like you have just had better luck with the brine shrimp so I’ll follow the advice. 
 

Thanks as always! 

 

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Here’s what we do for easy DIY bbs hatchery:

(1) buy 2x clear 1-liter polar springs water bottles. They have a narrow neck that works

(2) after emptying the water... using a sharp utility knife, cut one of them straight around the outside about   1/3 of the way down (this will be the base / holding bottom)

(3) after emptying the second one, cut off the bottom about 3/4 of the way down in the same way just by the ridge that bows the plastic back out. This will be the cap that is then fitted back over the top of that same cut unit — it will be squeezed o we exactly where you just cut it

(4) leaving the cap on, take the 2nd bottle and invert it into the 1st section

(5) take the bottom you cut off (which will be the “cap” and with a large enough drill bit (we just twist by hand) work 2x holes in — one for airline in, another to allow air pressure out

Buy the aquarium co-op bbs eggs by the can. Store those in refrigerator until used. 
 

We mix 3x tablespoons of aquarium salt in the inverted 1-liter container with room-temp water. Then add a rounded 1x tablespoon of artemia cysts. 
 

insert an airline with fairly rapid bubbles into one of the holes, and fit the cap on. Set by a light for 36 hrs. 
 

Then remove the airline, allow to settle for 2-5 mins, and draw out bbs from bottom with fishroom dedicated turkey baster. Brinecshrimp should be orangeish colored. Squirt this through a fine mesh brine shrimp net. Then dunk this into a separate small container of clean water to lower salinity you will be adding. 
 

you should be able to see all the bbs swarming. If it’s just brown eggs, then something went wrong. 
 

if you want to see more, move to the 6:35 min on this video:

 

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Thank you! That is awesome!

So, everything has been going great. This morning however the make seems to be chasing the female away from the babies and not wanting her anywhere near them. Do you all think I should pull one or both of the parents and give them a break for a bit? Or...would you just leave them to do their thing. The aquarium has plenty of Omar’s and caves for hiding and she can go away but if he sees her he does chase her almost immediately. 

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{I'd gladly yield to anyone else's better insights. This reply is going to ramble a bit.}

What we've observed is that various cichlids are bi-parental in the care for fry, others trade off care, and still others become mono-parental. It doesn't always depend on the species . . . sometimes different pairs of the same species will act differently. 

One cichlid (be it the male or female) chasing off the other parent _can_ be a sign of strong parental bond / protective behavior. However, if that same protective parent becomes overly stressed about the safety of the fry, we have seen them gobble the fry up (not just hide in the mouth, but literally eat the fry). It has sometimes been described as a way to "reconstitute protein" . . . just wait until the next cycle to start again . . . who knows.

Some cichlids go on a pretty fast spawning cycle. Our Koi Angels would spawn every 7-14 days. Sometimes, when the female drops that tube again, the parents will leave off caring for young, and begin spawning behavior again.

Now, you may observe that the cichlids will calm down, and begin bi-parental care again. Kribensis are famous for alternating protective parental roles. With Apistogrammas, we've seen females tail-whip big males in the face to protect fry (crazy thing to see!).

If you're a week into the fry being free-swimming, I'd say that the parents (or at least _one_ parent) wants to raise the fry properly. There are dangers with all choices:

(1) If you leave the parents in and just wait to see how things go... you might lose the fry. On the other hand, protective behavior can _solidify_ the parental bond to the fry, and might actually help the fry survive. Whatever you do, don't stress the fish out too much with lots of motions and lights. Be slow, still, calm, and do nothing out of the ordinary with the tank.

(2) If you pull the parents... you will want to become very, very vigilant with the fry. Parents tend to guide the fry around the tank, leading them over to where infusoria can be munched on. You'll want to being gently applying small amounts of live baby brine shrimp to the tank, and will need to watch and see how they take to it. We have found that German Blue Rams can actually eat baby brine shrimp much sooner than "the internet" says. You just need to pull a very early hatch -- pull your bbs form your hatchery at 24 hrs. There will be a lot of unhatched cysts; however, the newly hatched bbs will be small, and easier to feed. If you have some vinegar eels, they can be fed to young fry. But with vinegar eels, you need to be mindful of how you prepare them. We draw out about 10 ml. of vinegar eels from the surface of our culture, then squirt that into a container of about 10 oz of tank water. Then add a small pinch of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to counteract the acidity. Stir and let settle. Then harvest off of the surface. There will be tiny, tiny eels in the pipette. The main risk in pulling out the parents is making sure that your fry are properly cared for _by you_. 

(3) If you pull _one_ parent... you risk upsetting the whole environment and balance, and may watch the other "protective" parent suddenly decide that the safest thing is for the fry to become "reconstituted protein." 

It really all depends on what your goals are. If you're just trying to learn, and enjoy your fish, maybe just let them go. But if you're trying to really raise fry, there's a case to be made for pulling the parents. 

{And now . . . I yield to everyone else with better answers! 😂}

 

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Hi Marley!

@Fish Folk has certainly given you a lot of great advice!

I've been breeding rams for a few years now and I almost always pull the eggs/fry out for this very reason. The males can get quite aggressive protecting the fry from the female. It can be a nice experience to see the pair raise up the fry together but the aggression isn't worth it in my opinion. This might be a good time to pull the fry out.

If you're set on leaving them all in the tank together I would make sure that you leave some kind of small light on in the room over night so that the male can still see the female. I've had males relentlessly attack females when the lights turned on in the morning- it almost seems that they forget that the other fish was there.

Great job getting the fry to this point with the parents! As @Fish Folk said it's not the norm for GBRs to be great parents.

Good luck!

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Bsharrow said:

If you're set on leaving them all in the tank together I would make sure that you leave some kind of small light on in the room over night so that the male can still see the female. I've had males relentlessly attack females when the lights turned on in the morning- it almost seems that they forget that the other fish was there.

Good recommendation! 

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@Fish Folk or anyone else.....how long after the ram fry become free swimming do you start feeding BBS?  I have some vinegar eel cultures but think BBS will be much better for the fry per @Dean’s Fishroom and @Cory ‘s videos. I’m just worried that when the fry go from wigglers to free swimming, the BBS will be too big for the fry at that early stage.     Right now I have a ton of wigglers so I’m trying to figure out when I need to fire up the Ziss hatchery I got from the Coop. 

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Once they’re free-swimming, they’ll need to be fed. They can survive a bit on remainder of yolk sack, but rams go through that fast, especially if your water temp is above 80 degrees.

What we do is mix a bit of sera micron fry powder into a cup of tank water as one source of food, and also try feeding some newly hatched bbs. Here’s a video illustrating how we do this for rams:

 

Edited by Fish Folk
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