Golden Ram Not Eating ( Hiding Amoungst The Plants )

Hi, I'm sorry to hear about your ram.

Since you say you have another male in the tank the most likely explanation is that the blue one is bullying the gold one. The tank is not big enough for 2 males to have territories so one will bully the other until he leaves the territory or dies. In a fish tank, leaving another fish's territory is not possible.
I think the blue ram is bullying the gold ram, not just physically but also by secreting pheromones to make the gold ram leave. Both physical and chemical bullying will be severely stressing the gold ram.

The only thing you can do to save the gold ram is to remove him from the tank, either into another tank you may have, or to someone else's tank or a shop.



Rams are cichlids. They are very territorial fish, males will not tolerate other males. They will also not tolerate females unless they have bonded.
You say you have 4 rams - we know that one is a blue male, and one is a gold male, but what are the other two? The danger is that if one or both are males, the blue ram will start bullying them when the gold male is removed or dies. If the other two are both females, the blue male may well pair up with one of them and they'll both bully the last female. It is also known that with an unbonded m/f pair of rams, one will kill the other at some point.


The other thing I notice is your temperature. Wild caught rams need a temp of around 28 deg C. Yours will not be wild caught but could have recent wild ancestors - breeders often use a wild fish to widen the gene pool. Rams that have no wild ancestors for many generations can tolerate lower temperatures, but I feel that 24 C is a bit low. But we need to know what other fish you have before altering the temperature.
Rams are also sensitive to nitrate, and that should be kept below 20 ppm.

P.s can you suggest a test kit as i see fish keepers posting numbers about water conditions but not sure what kit they use..

Liquid-based test kits seem to be more reliable than paper-based test strips. Many people find the API Masterkit the best value, often found at good rates on e-bay. Personally, I have a mix of different brands but find JBL tests easy to use and read although I don't have its Combiset.

One tactic you could try (especially if you are taking down the tank shortly) is rearranging the tank decorate to disrupt and territories that have formed and encourage them to 'start over'. If you removed the fish during this process and separated them before bringing them back together in the freshly arranged tank, this would help also.  It is entirely possible that the fish will resume their prior pecking order though.

What is your water hardness? as you appear to have a mix of soft water fish (rams) and hard water fish (guppies)

I'm sorry to hear that the ram died.

All the colour varieties of ram behave the same; having two gold and a blue, for example, just means you have 3 rams. Bolivian rams, being a different species, will not mix with rams.
You have to be careful with cichlids. Males defend a territory on the bottom of the tank. They will not allow males of the same species into it, and may also chase away males of similar species. So having M. ramirezi (ram) males and M. altispinosus (Bolivian ram) males in the same tank may not work long term. And just buying more rams won't guarantee anything either. If you got more males, the current males would object. if you got more females, they may not get on, and could kill each other. Rams, and Bolivian rams must choose their own mates. The usual way is to buy 6 rams or 6 Bolivian rams as juveniles, let two pair up then rehome the other 4. But this won't work here because you already have rams in the tank.
What you really need to do is work out exactly what you have. How many male and female rams, and how many Bolivian rams, though it will be impossible to say whether those are male or female. Then decide which you want. You will have a few options - keep the bolivian ram(s); keep the 'ordinary' rams; or even part exchange all the rams you currently have when buying more fish for your new tank, then get half a dozen juveniles of either rams or Bolivian rams, let them pair up then take the rest back. With non-Bolivian rams, you can mix colours.

As for your sand, I'm sorry to tell you but white is just about the worst colour from the fish's point of view. If it is bright white it will stress the fish because they have evolved over, and therefore expect, dark substrates. This is why fish look dark when we look down on them so that they blend in with the substrate (river, lake bottom) and are less easily seen by predators. Fish are also pale underneath so they blend in with the sky, so that predators lower down in the water can't see them properly.
I would be inclined to mix your current white sand with a darker sand in the new tank so it comes out a dark and white speckled mix.
Provided the slate has no sharp edges whatsoever, it could look good say piled up in one corner. Our member @Matt  has an amazing aquascaping website to give you some ideas 


When we give numbers for pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, those are all ppm as measured by our test kits. Just about all test kits contain those 4, but some contain others as well. The 4 are the ones you need while the extras are really optional. It depends how much money you are willing to spend. Some of the extensive kits are mainly aimed at people who have a lot of live plants and need to know the levels of all sorts of things for their plants.
I have the API kit. That contains 2 pH testers but as you are in Scotland with soft water the chances are you also have pH below 7.6 so you wouldn't need the high range pH bottle.
All liquid nitrate testers have more than one bottle - usually 2 or sometimes 3 bottles. The instructions say to shake one of those bottles very well, and also the test tube just after the drops are added. This is because one of the reagents isn't actually soluble and it settles on the bottom of the bottle. The shaking is necessary to get it spread evenly through the liquid, and failure to shake is the most common cause of false nitrate readings.

Your hardness of 36.43 - is that mg/l CaCO3 or mg/l Ca?
Water companies could use any of half a dozen units. Fishkeeping uses only 2 units - ppm, which is the same as mg/l CaCO3, and dH, which is another name for German degrees.
So if your 36.43 is in mg/l CaCO3, that is 36.43 ppm and 2 dH. But if it is 36.43 mg/l Ca, that converts to 92 ppm and 5 dH. While both of those are classed as soft, you do need to know if your water is very soft or just soft.

Aw - sad news about the ram; sorry to read that. 

Ammonia and nitrite are essential, you didn't mention those? At the first sign of something not right with any fish, testing for ammonia and nitrite should be done immediately.
You don't need any other tests but pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. If you want to buy other testers, that's fine, for example testing phosphate might flag up a problem in a tank with excessive algae.