German Blue Ram

[SConrad]

On Friday I went and bought a pair of German Blue's and I was wondering if I can feed them flak food or do I have to buy some other type of cichlid food??

 

[CathyG]

Mine happily eat anything I drop n the tank. They will eat flake, but if I drop an algae tab in they will go for that instead. They also love dried and frozen bloodworm, and are partial to blanched vegetables too. I can say they are the least fussy eaters after the danios and gourami! Enjoy them!

 

[SConrad]

I'm already enjoying 'em!!!
By far the momst brilliant colored fish I have ever had...Can they eat frozen Baby Brine Shrimp? I have some of that I could spare.

I have another question though.
I'm not 100% on them being a pair. Their dorsal's look the same to me, but one has a pink stomach..The pink stomach means female right? I also was wondering if the pink was eggs inside her, or spawning colors or somthing like that...The pink stomached one is my "suspected female". The other has darker colors too...but not sure if that could be stress marks or what. Sorry if this is realy hard to understand, LOL. I have no pics, but I could try to get one...THANKS!!

 

[CathyG]

Yes they will eat almost anything. My female became very possessive of a slice of banana once!


The pink stomach is a female, the male will have a yellow stomach and longer fins, as in the pic of my two below

More info can be found here.

 

[SConrad]

thx for replying!!

 

[shrimpster97]

WOW great picture! mine arent that colorful but i still love them. haha i feed mine flakes but i will try the blood worm maybe.

 

[SConrad]

That pic is realy nice BTW!! What do you do to get their colors to come out like that

 

[Ben]

anyfood basically

when my rams finnaly felt comefrtable in their tank the colours started to show, also during breeding colours really come out

 

[CathyG]

Thank you for the compliments I don't do anything special in particular to maintain their colours. Like most people here, I keep an eye on my water quality, I perform regular water changes (currently 20-30% twice a week, because my tank is overstocked whilst I plan my 540 litre purchase) and feed a varied diet. They were not as bright as this when I bought them, so hopefully I am doing something right!

My maintained parameters are

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 15-20 (my tap water reads 10ppm and my tank is planted so this level is maintained)
PH - 7.2 (originally closer to 8, but I use RO water for 25% of the volume)
GH - 200mg/l (originally 300mg/l but RO water brought this down for me)
KH - 110 mg/l (was originally 160 until RO water)
Phosphorous - between 2 and 4 (2 from the tap)

I have fairly hard and alkaline water, enough that limescale damaged my filter impellor within three months of purchase. This was the main reason I decided to soften the water, since my fish were previously happy in the higher readings anyhow.



Shrimpster - mine happily take bloodworm from my hand lol!

 

[shrimpster97]

Shrimpster - mine happily take bloodworm from my hand lol!

i fed mine blood worm this morning the seemed to like it. the danios were even liking it.

 

[SConrad]

Last night I tossed in a chunk of pear and they loved it! lol, I think they're settling in pretty good into their new home, better than that tank of african cichlids at the LFS(only because I special ordered them and they had nowhere to put them..)

 

[shrimpster97]

^^good! you should be happy with them, i sure am!

 

[SConrad]

oh trust me, I AM!

 

[SConrad]

just wanted to say thx for helpin me everyone, im sticking to flakes and will feed treats every so often*AKA when i can afford bloodworms or somthing lol