Bolivian Ram Breeding

[FishLover66]

I have a pair of Bolivian rams who have laid eggs on a rock in my community aquarium yesterday. Can someone with experience with raising fry please answer some questions for me?

My water parameters have been running 6.0 lately to usually around 6.8 pH with soft water, zero ammonia and nitrites, and nitrates has been running around 40, although I did a 30% water change a few days ago, so that most likely was lowered. I read somewhere that fry (and potentially eggs?) are very sensitive to nitrates. How low should I keep the nitrates and will continuous water changes interfere with the rams properly raising their fry or harm them in some way?

I also read somewhere that they should be fine for the first week (including egg stage and yoke sack stage) on their own, but then they need to be fed fry food. Considering the size of my tank and how tall it is, any suggestions on how I can get the fry food to them so it's not wasted and/or clouds up my tank?

I still have my 10 gallon quarentine tank set up and plan on taking some, but not all, of the fry out of the main tank to hopefully save some of them and eventually sell them. When is the best time for me to do that?

 

[thereverendturtle]

Nitrates below 30 is good. Small frequent water changes won't cause any harm. Once the fry are free swimming they'll need to be fed, a turkey baster or syringe used to inject food close to them, works well. As long as the 10 gal is cycled and ready to go, you can move fry at any time.

 

[FishLover66]

Thanks for the reply--great info. Unfortunately, the eggs disappeared over the course of two days, so no fry. It was pretty sad to watch as the male seemed to be in denial there for a while and was very protective of that area--even chasing away the female that he paired with. I'm not sure what happened to them (whether they got fungus on them and the rams picked the bad ones out or they were eaten by the other fish in the aquarium).