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Sudden Unexplained Blue Ram cichlid deaths


New to Alberta
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My friend and I bought some ram chilids from the same sources and two of his have died from something I haven't seen before in my experience with fish health. I am wondering if anyone might provide some info on what this may be as I am currently at a loss as to what the diagnosis is and how to remedy it. I am also concerned for mine even though I haven't experienced the problem in the ones I purchased as of yet. Both tanks are quite similar in water parameters as in 0 amonia/nitrite and a trace of nitrate the only difference being that I have softened my water with some R/O water and his is straight tap (treated with Prime of course).

Here are the symptoms that have occured leading to death of the fish quite quickly. Fish appears a bit shy or lethergic and then is swimming weakly, laying on side breathing heavily, to losing equilibrium and flipping up side down. All this seems to take place in a matter of a day both times soon after a partial water change. The only other mild symptoms before this was a bit of a cloudy slime coat and a dark coloration patch on a surviving ram that did not fall prey to the other symptoms.

We are both pretty experienced fish keepers so we have ruled out any of the typical stuff like Ph flux - toxic fish waste parameters - temp flux - aggression - overcrowding etc...and I have inspected/tested the tank myself on both occasions. Also both tanks were set up for many months before adding the rams and have other unaffected fish like cardinal tetra and rummy nose.

P.S. - They rams were in the tank a few weeks after purchase before they died and I think were not of the same store.

Edited by New to Alberta
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It's better to find "home grown" rams than ones from the store. A lot a GR come from asian markets were they are pumped full of hormones to color up at an early age and usally within months/weeks they die. I noticed the gold rams from bigs als never last very long

My $.002

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Yes, I have heard that myself also and seen some of the health effects of these types of rams at the LFS I worked at in Halifax. Mostly I had only observed a wasting away of health but never anything like this. I'm not ruling it out though but am worried that it is either something viral or parasitic (God forbid) or may just be something poisoning/toxic to these fish in the tap water. I only mention the tap water because it is the only differenciating factor between the tanks and the incidents occured right after a decent partial water change. I don't see any other cases posted like this though on this site explaining that Edmonton water can be adverse to keeping Rams. I'm currently researching alkalosis and possibly some type of heavy metal poisoning. Hopefully someone can help shed some light on this for me and maybe has had a similar experience. In the mean time I'm going to get my friend to start cutting his water with R/O like myself - can't hurt. I don't want to advise to start hitting the tank with meds as there are some live plants in the tank and other sensitive fish species - without a proper or reasonably suspected culprit we'd just be shooting in the dark and probaqbly make thing worse. Yikes! Thanks for the help though and if you know a good source of rams we'd appreciate it.

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Update! Ever since cutting the tank water with R/O instead of straight tap there has been quite an improvement in the tank. The fish are showing prime coloration and seem happier/perkier. There isn't any signs of illness at all so life is good.

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