How to stop my maccus from eating the ram eggs

[thijs]

My rams spawn about every two weeks, but the eggs never last longer than one night. I am quite sure my 5 P. maccus are the caviar-thieves. Is there a way to save the eggs (without needing an extra aquarium)?

Thanks in advance,
Thijs

[MatsP]

Aside from the obvious answer of "get another tank", I can only think of the same solution as you'd do when you need more rooms in a house and can't build an extension: Put up a partition wall - it can be made from many materials and as you probably don't need to separate the WATER, you could use something like a piece of "egg-crate", the square "mesh" type diffusers used for fluorescent lights and such.

I don't think there is any way to stop the plecos from eating the "caviar".

--
Mats

[Yann]

Hi

I wouldn't exclude the fact that the ram pair could eat their own eggs

cheers

[MatsP]

I wouldn't exclude the fact that the ram pair could eat their own eggs

I agree. I saw my rams eating their eggs. But I'm also convinced that plecos, including Panaque will eat eggs too - and the stress of trying to defend the eggs may make the rams think "I give up, rather than leave the eggs for the others to eat, we'll eat them".

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Mats

[Mike_Noren]

Rams will not care for eggs or young - normal reproductive behaviour has been almost completely bred out of them. I have never personally seen rams successfully care for their offspring; I'm told it very rarely does happen, but it's definitely not the way to bet.

If you want to breed your rams you need to remove the eggs from the parents immediately and hatch them artificially. Breeding is fairly difficult, as the larvae when they become free-swimming are too small to eat newly hatched artemia.

[thijs]

Thanks all for the quick replies.
The rams are F1, the bred ones are plain ugly to me. I am familiar with the stories of eating the eggs when there is too much stress. But they they defend the eggs fierce against the Panaques, and wave fresh water at the eggs. After the light go out, the eggs disappear.

[Mike_Noren]

That does sound like the plecos might be responsible.
Have you tried using a nightlight or simply leaving the light on?

[thijs]

Sounds like something to consider next time. The tank is a display tank, so messing the whole thing up is not something i really look forward to.

[apistomaster]

My money is on the Rams themselves are eating their spawns long before the Panaque maccus ever become aware of them.
I have raised 1000's of Rams and about many hundreds of spawns over the years I have only had one pair of gold Rams raise their fry in text book fashion and that single spawn yielded about 400 fry. I have never come close to that number of survivors using artificial means but in commercial breeding one can not rely on natural breeding methods for predictable results. Better to know I will raise 100 fry than wait and hope for a successful natural one. However, when it works it is a beautiful sight and with the parents' care the survival rate is much higher. In artificial raising of eggs and fry you can get large hatches but it is challenging to supply enough initial microfoods and keep the rearing water clean and nitrite free. nitrite is extremely toxic to ram fry and nitrite levels also retard the growth of the stronger survivors. It is quite labor intensive to artificially raise rams but it works. The F1's should develop just as nice colors as the parents. GBR are highly inbred and tend not to reach as large a size as some other strains. Ram fry kept in good water conditions and fed a lot of live food actually grow quite fast and may begin spawning by the time they are 6 months old.
I doubt you will ever be successful in your present set up although for awhile your pair will spawn almost every week for months on end.
Rams have naturally rather short life spans; most only live to 2-1/2 years. They are always easy to buy so maybe someday you can try pairs set up in their own breeding tanks and get to see them raise a brood. If you placed all your hopes to see this on only one pair you will probably never see it. I would try at least 4 different pair set ups and hope one pair raises a spawn.
I have crossed Gold with Blue Rams and the result was a very pretty Ram of normal color but it became clear to me that the Gold mutation arose from a different line than the golds. The resulting fish appeared more like wild Rams in peak colors and not as blue as GBR. The colors of hybrid fry were very nice and they were strong fish, a result of outcrossing unrelated lines of Rams. An example of hybrid vigor.
These fry all carried the recessive gene for Gold so when siblings were bred together i had 25% Gold fry, 25% pure Blue and 50% blue which were heterozygous for the recessive gold gene. A classic example of simple Mendelian genetics.