Breeding rams in a planted tank?

[PlantedTankLover]

Below is a link to the report. It's on the 3rd page. I do have 4 pieces of drift wood in the tank as well.

http://www.crownpoint.in.gov/docs/re...H20_Report.pdf
I'm the nw indiana section, not east Chicago.

[PlantedTankLover]

Can anyone tell me what those number mean?

[Waterrat]

PTL- I'm new to this site, but we have been breeding Rams and Apistos for years, and since we live in the same area as you I thought I would weigh in on this discussion.

We too live in the Chicago area, and unless you live in one of the suburban areas that does not get it's water from Lake Michigan, your water should be fine. We live in the northwest suburban area, and like so many other communities, we get our water from Lake Michigan. Our water is about 7 grains, or 180 micro-siemens, which means it is right on the border between very soft and soft water. The pH is about 7.2-7.4. We use our water directly from the tap and do absolutely nothing to our water (except add Prime as a dechlorinator) and our fish thrive, spawn and our hatching rates are near 100% (depending on the parents). As Aquaticfan mentioned, if your rams are obtained from wild stock, they may never adjust well to hard water conditions. While they may live for a while, they will eventually waste away and die within a couple of moths. Fortunately, most of the Rams you can get locally are either bred and raised locally, or in fish farms in Florida. If you can get locally bred fish, that is fish raised under the same water conditions as you have, they should do very well for you.

I would also agree with AquaticFan in that a tank this size should easily house 2 breeding pairs of Rams. In our experience, Rams make terrible parents. In the hundreds of spawns we have raised, not one of our pairs have ever raised their own fry, no matter how hard we try, or how many variables we change, but I do know of other breeders who have had some success. It just depends on the fish. Rams are fully mature and capable of spawning somewhere between 3 1/2 to 4 months of age. If you plan on raising the fry yourself (if you've ever raised angelfish, the process is very similar), you'll need to provide the parents with a number of spawning sites that can be removed to a hatching jar. We use small pieces of slate, about 2" square. Place about 4-6 of these in various places in the tank, but especially in the corners and around the outer edge of the tank. Keep them away from the front of the tank and they naturally want to be undisturbed.

Good conditioning also helps provide large, viable spawns. We use frozen Blood worms, blackworms, adult brine shrimp, frozen beefheart, and Spectrum pellets (.5 mm size) to keep our fish in top condition.

Also, it does sound like the fish you originally had were indeed German Blue Rams. They are probably the most hardy of the color varieties.

[snausage]

There isn't any information in that report pertaining to the hardness of your water. It is basically just telling you that your tap water isn't polluted with hazardous chemicals.

Water hardness is measured in two ways. Carbonate hardness (kH), measures the amount of dissolved carbonate ions in water. General hardness (gH), is just a measure of the amount of dissolved calcium and magnesium ions.

Before you purchase any fish or expensive equipment, get a kH/gH test kit and determine the values of your tap water. I've never bred rams, but I'm sure those who are most successful have very soft water with kH values from 0-2 and gH values below 10.

[PlantedTankLover]

Alright, lots of great info. So what can I keep and what do I need to get rid of when it comes to my current stock?

1 male angel fish
7 Pristella Tetra
1 pleco
2 yoyo loach
5 guppies