Intro And My Fishy Project - Cora

Morning all.

So I got to FishCove Friday afternoon and the keeper, as a gesture of goodwill for me having waited so long for the Rams, and being a good customer, gave me 8 rams for the price of 5!

Eight Bolivian Rams does probably overstock my tank slightly, and it didn't help that I also came away with three more panda cories. I'm not sure how that happened, but I do recall saying something along the lines of "can I also have three panda cories?"

I removed a few plants on Thursday and created a semi-circle open place in the front of the tank and it's worked a treat for seeing the cories better. Now, all 13 of them (13!!) are often shuffling around together.

The BRs seem to have settled in well, and they are really stunning fish. Some thoughts on their behaviour though:

In parts of the tank they all get on well and happily drift around together. But in other parts they can be very territorial. There are one or two males, clearly dominant, who like to butt heads and chase the other off. There is no sign of breeding behaviour yet, and they are completely docile to other fish. I suspect that I have more males than females. If I use the dorsal fins and coloration as a guide, there does appear to be more males.

The tank has plenty of hiding places and line-of-sight blockers though, so if they did want to pair off there's nothing stopping them.

I'm not sure where a good diet for them is coming from. They aren't great with sinking catfish pellets, but a few of them do float around the cories who break up the pellets, taking advantage of dislodged bits. So I've bought small sinking cichlid pellets for them. I've read that BRs can learn to come to the mid and top tank to feed but the truth is, with the other fish around everything is gone before it even half sinks

They make a great centrepiece to the tank though and I can't recommend them enough. Over the next days/weeks I'll hopefully get the best out of them re behaviour and colour.

I've certainly had the problem of hearing the words "oh, and please could I have....." coming out of my mouth without any conscious prompting from my brain.

Been there, done that.  Always feel very proud of myself when I manage to leave the shop without a new fishy friend.

I found the Bolivian rams I had took a while to start eating properly. The food they ate first is unfortunately not made any more, but it was a sinking tablet food which broke up easily. I feed JBL Novo Tabs to my last few cories and they look similar in texture to the discontinued food.
And BRs also fed from the surface once they discovered there was food up there.


Other gender differences with bolivian rams - the anal fin extends beyond the caudal peduncle in males. Females bodies are a gentle curve on the underside from the mouth to the tail while male's tend to have a flat part from the anal fin to the tail.
There are no 100% methods of telling males from females until their genital tubes become visible. Males' are pointy, females' are the same width all the way down.