My way of breeding ram cichlids

[f_luxus]

Dear Fellow Fishkeepers,
I wanted to share a small, exciting fry-rearing project with you all today, and I’m really keen to hear your opinions and experiences!
My pair of German Blue Rams (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) are prolific, but unfortunately, the fry never make it in the main community tank. I've therefore decided to siphon the tiny fry out and move them to a separate 12-gallon rearing tank set up specifically for this purpose.
The Philosophy: Robustness over Maximum Numbers
The key difference to the common advice is my primary goal: I am deliberately not trying to raise the highest possible number of larvae. Instead, my focus is on creating an environment that makes the survivors extremely resilient and robust.
My Setup and the "Nutrient-Rich" Environment
What I am doing differently concerns the tank setup and ongoing care:
I avoid clinical cleanliness. Many might call it "mucky," but I refer to it as a nutrient-rich environment. It is crucial for me to provide plenty of mulm, algae, and detritus. This "mess" is the foundation for a constant natural microfauna (Daphnia, Cyclops) that serves as continuous food for the young fish.
Feeding and Metabolism: In addition to the natural food source, I regularly feed Artemia nauplii (brine shrimp). To keep their metabolism high, the temperature is about 25–27 °C.
Light and CO2: There is lots of light and a slight CO2 addition to promote plant growth and therefore oxygen production.
Water Care: Despite the nutrient-rich substrate, I ensure high water quality through large, regular water changes. In my 12-gallon tank, I change 30–50% of the water every two days. This is luckily a very quick job.

From the original 40 larvae, there are still approximately 10 fry remaining after the first month.

This might sound harsh, but my experience suggests that the survivors who successfully navigate this selective phase become incredibly vital and healthy fish that are subsequently much less susceptible to illness. Fewer fish, but those that are significantly more robust—that’s my motto.
Do you have similar or completely different strategies for raising German Blue Rams? I look forward to any exchange of ideas and all your tips!
Best wishes, Felix

 

[GaryE]

I don't keep German Blue Rams as I'm one of those wild type purists. I don't breed linebred or human modified fish. But I do breed dwarf Cichlids of comparable difficulty.
Like you, I'd rather raise ten fish over 50 fish for sale, although my motivation is having no outlet for surplus fish. If I bred a regularly available and well known fish like a GBR, I could sell them. But rarer fish have no market here.
My rearing tanks look remarkably like yours. I use no CO2, and I do very regular (weekly 30%, sometimes more with fry tanks) water changes. That's a difference between our techniques. I always keep a small area near the front glass plant and algae free, and feed into there. That lets me view the fish. I feed artemia and other, dry foods soaked and fired in via a turkey baster.
I don't count on the bio-life of the tank to feed the fry, except if I go away. Then it does a fair job. Fry grow with no supplemental feeding, though I don't like to go more than a week with that. I have an advantage as most of the fish I breed give me small broods to begin with. 20 is a pretty good result. I don't count on attrition, which doesn't necessarily give stronger fish - just fish better adapted to the tank they're in. Most survival is a question of luck in this world. With killifish, where eggs are hidden and fry can grow up in a heavily planted tank, only showing themselves at a few weeks of age, the 'feral' ones aren't necessarily healthier or more robust than traditionally raised ones. I've had some pretty poor specimens make it to adult life with very little attention. In nature, they would fall to predators, but tank rearing of any sort is quite unnatural.
With very delicate Cichlid fry, if I have an initial brood of 20, I'm happy if 10 make it to adulthood. The main cause of attrition is murder, and I remove females with a lot of species as the more robust and quicker growing males can become competitive for space when young.
Right now, I have far too many Parananochromis brevirostris, as it's a rare fish with a history of skewed sex ratios in captivity. I had to raise a lot to get enough females to share them with a visiting European friend, and now have a lot of excess males killing each other in a large tank. It won't be the strongest that survives, but rather the oldest from the five broods mixed in there. I don't have the resources to manage otherwise. and have an F-2 couple that I expect will spawn within the week. Maybe I'll be one of the only keepers to have brought wild caughts from this fish past F-1. F-3 would be an accomplishment. But I do wish I lived in a place where fishkeepers would line up to take such fish home!
I have couples in several tanks, as I like to keep fish over several generations to figure them out.

A clean, crisp tank isn't for fish as much as for people. It's as much an ornament as fish no one intends to breed are. In aquascapes, fish are secondary to the look. I control front glass algae manually, and try to keep the leaves of my plants from being too encumbered by algae. My tanks are closer to being secondary forests than to being botanical gardens. I think there are great and easily demonstrated benefits to that, if you breed fish.

We have different philosophies on water changes, and probably I feed the fish more. The tanks look very similar.

 

[f_luxus]

I change 30–50% of the water every two days.

@Gar in this case i change a lot water.
I feed also brine shrimps. Remember the tank has no filter and a lot of waste, because of the food. I know commercial breeders, they grow their babyfish in a empty tank, with only a heater and siphon every bit of waiste from it.
If you do it like that, you will have 80% survivor rate i guess, but a lot of them die as soon they get in contact with common aquarium jerms...

BTW the only reason i breed GBR is, that i bought the first couple years ago, when i was kind of a aquarium freshmen.
I had a 15gallon tank with Tanichthys albonubes and some shrimps many years before, but no ambitions except giving them a good life.
A bit Anubias 12W LED and a 10$ filter so far

When i met my girlfriend after beeing divorced, she told me, that she grew up in a home with a huge tropical tank and she really loved the GBR in that tank. So we started our first tropical tank. After a while i was very in to it, asked many questions in German forums and met @Zer0Fame who lived nearby me and was even more plant enthusiast and the same kind of "keep your fish in a fair and healthy way" guy.
He teached me the most i know now, even if we practice different kind of tanks, most of the time.

 

[GaryE]

I like rams, and have to confess I might be extra harsh on the GBR version because I couldn't ever get them to spawn. Every breeder has fish like that - mine are GBRs and Tateurndina ocellicauda gobies - 2 fish that will not cooperate with me, but will with others.

I hatch baby brine shrimp 5 days a week, to feed my killies and tetras, as well as any fry. The first aquarium club I attended had a speaker who explained how to make a hatchery, and that changed my hobby, maybe more than any other piece of gear.

Right now, I have some tetras in an empty rearing tank. I'll fix that this afternoon, because I'll be away this weekend. In go some plants. My Nothobranchius fry are in a planted tank, as are my Enteromius barbs.

 

[f_luxus]

I keep them with 27°C they spawn after every water change. Even with only flakes (fluval bug bites) they spawn.

 

[Zer0Fame]

He teached me the most i know now, even if we practice different kind of tanks, most of the time.

You have no idea how much I learned from your way of handling fish tanks and how they helped me refine my "philosophy".
Your tanks show how important the microbiology in a tank is.

I remember the tank of the rams from your old apartment. Work of art, really. Like cut out of nature.

Can't wait to see how this one develops.

 

[GaryE]

I keep them with 27°C they spawn after every water change. Even with only flakes (fluval bug bites) they spawn.

You are a cruel person! For me, GBRs have never successfully spawned. I know how, my set up was good but they just don't like me. I moved on to other Cichlid projects, almost all with West and Central African species. I no longer breed any South Americans.

Rams, as a pool and pond fish, are ideal for your type of set up with little water movement. It corresponds to their habitat, even if the GBR version is far removed from that. I'm a little bit jealous.

 

[anewbie]

As a general rule i keep the frys with the parents as long as possible so the parents can teach hte frys to be good parents when they grow up. My rams frequently spawn (i have gold ones); but they are still learning how to be parents. In truth the mom isn't much of a mom and the dad does most of the work but dads are never as good as good moms. They are getting better so maybe one day they will be good parents but i refuse to remove the wrigglers to raise without parents.

 

[f_luxus]

As a general rule i keep the frys with the parents as long as possible so the parents can teach hte frys to be good parents when they grow up.

That's a complete myth. GBR or any other breed are so full of stress hormons, they don't teach nothing...
They just kill everything moving, while protecting their fry... So i siphon the fry asap, so they don't kill my other fish.
If you seperate them from other fish, they also are really stressed while protecting their fry.
You can see it from their color. Problem is, stress is reason N°1 for short life for GBR.
If you let them spawn every month, the female will be a wrack after 6-8 months. That's one reason i don't do so much water changes in my 47 gallons aquarium.

 

[f_luxus]

You have no idea how much I learned from your way of handling fish tanks and how they helped me refine my "philosophy".
Your tanks show how important the microbiology in a tank is.

I remember the tank of the rams from your old apartment. Work of art, really. Like cut out of nature.

Can't wait to see how this one develops.

This one?
That was the tank for the juveniles

Kind of dutch style with a bit of Amano inspiration

 

[GaryE]

That's a complete myth. GBR or any other breed are so full of stress hormons, they don't teach nothing...

I'd like to see you provide proof for saying this is a myth. Learning through broodcare, be it a triggering of existing instinct or not, is something observed and reported by many breeders over the years. It's something I've seen with Apistogramma and Pelvicachromis, as well as with angelfish.
Stress is a serious issue, but so is modelling and channeling. I don't think they are that much different from us in the basics - the broodcare instincts work better when the young are exposed to good broodcare. The question is whether you value the observation of broodcare.

The natural aquarium is a myth. Our set ups are very unnatural, and can't be otherwise. When we attempt to recreate a version of nature in our tanks, we have to recognize that microbiology is key, but so is fish behaviour. You can get lost looking at the tank first and at the fish second.
There's nothing wrong with getting lost, but it makes a poor basis for mythbusting. Pretty tanks are great for aquascaping, but the broad picture is bigger.

Grabbing the fry too early is a mass production trick. The only situation where I'd see cause to remove the fry too soon because of stress hormones is if you you use tanks far too small to allow natural behaviour.

I confess, I've done it with first spawns of 'new' Cichlid species that could not be replaced. I wanted the young to get the fish into the hobby. In time, I learned to let it be. I no longer do that, and I do just as well with newly introduced species. The parents are better at raising healthy, robust fry than I am. I just provide them with assistance.

There's a philosophical question. I keep fish to watch what fish do in as close to a natural set up as I can create. That involves tank size, lay out, shade and light, feeding and above all from my observations in the wild, water movement and current. All of the Central African species I keep came from very oxygenated water on the move. All seem to have adaptations to moving water.

If my upcoming trip to West Africa shows me species that live in still, weed filled water, then they will get tanks designed for them on that model. Your rams are a good example of a fish from such a habitat, so they thrive in your unfiltered tanks. If the fish prove to be from similar waters to what I've caught fish in in Gabon, Honduras, Mexico, the US, Canada and Belize, then unfiltered tanks would be wrong choices.

In the end, how well our fry (there is no s on that word) grow and function as parents in the next generation may be pure instinct. I like to keep a fish for several generations because I can watch for changes in their behaviour. Highly inbred breeder products like GBRs and many angelfish breeds can be awful at parenting in comparison to wilds. It could be because they are taken from their parents immediately to maximize profit. It could also be because behavioural genes are linked to the physical changes fancy breeders aim for. There may be unintended consequences to big fins or unnatural colours. But I can report that wild caught juveniles that grow up in my tanks and spawn are invariably good parents by the second spawn at the latest. That pattern continues for the 2 or 3 generations following. Farm raised adults often eat a few batches of eggs, abandon their eggs or kill their fry for the first four or five spawns.

 

[f_luxus]

Sorry, that shouldn't sound that absolute. But my parentless grown female is showing the same behavior as her mother, that was grown with their parents. GBR have a lot more cortisol level then the wild caughts. I think that makes them too aggressive to be good parents, not a lack of parenthood.
The fry is schooling trough the aquarium so or so. And i could not see any difference in their behavior.
But what i could see, is that the biggest XL Rams with the brightest colours are way more aggressiv.

 

[anewbie]

Sorry, that shouldn't sound that absolute. But my parentless grown female is showing the same behavior as her mother, that was grown with their parents. GBR have a lot more cortisol level then the wild caughts. I think that makes them too aggressive to be good parents, not a lack of parenthood.
The fry is schooling trough the aquarium so or so. And i could not see any difference in their behavior.
But what i could see, is that the biggest XL Rams with the brightest colours are way more aggressiv.

I can tell you my gold rams and gbr are definitely lacking the aggressive trait. Don't get me wrong i've owned domestic rams in the past that have been hyper aggressive but there seems to be a vast range of aggression and the current ones could do with a bit more.

On the other hand i have them in 10s which is a bit on the small side esp if one of these days they do develop a bit more aggression. They are decent 10s with hiding places but still a larger aquarium would be more appropriate. They are on my 'toy' side of things as my 20, 29s and 65s are used for more serious fishes. In general i find the 65s a good size for most of the dwarf cichild but alas i only have so much space and the counters can only handle 10s.

My hope is to move in 26 months and then i will make 65s my standard size with the 20 long/29s used for 'toy' setup.

I think people underestimate how fishes behavior change as the space increases - but i can't setup 20 100s too expensive and not enough room

(ignoring the increase labor)

 

[Innesfan]

I'd like to see you provide proof for saying this is a myth. Learning through broodcare, be it a triggering of existing instinct or not, is something observed and reported by many breeders over the years. It's something I've seen with Apistogramma and Pelvicachromis, as well as with angelfish.

And especially true of Discus!

 

[Zer0Fame]

This one?

No the old Juwel with the Otocinclus (right next to the living room door).