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Ok I have kept rams for several months in my planted tank.They do great and eat like pigs(my gold ram is positively obese).But whenever I buy a female it dies within a few days.This is the third I have had(and they are not easy to find either), now she seems to be on the way out too.

I dont see what the problem is, I acclimatise them slowly adding small amounts of my tank water to the bag over period of about an hour.Initially the fish seems fine and after only about an hour or so she is eating and exploring her new home.The males are obviously interested and usually they will display to each other with the female taking interest in the males.There is little if any aggression.But the next day things start to go downhill.The female starts to hide a bit, her breathing gets a little harder and her colours start to darken.She begins to lose interest in food and eventually will just hide and die.There seems no sign of disease its like the fish is slowly posioned.

Can anyone explain this?Do females come from a different source or something?If this one dies I probably wont try again(I dont want to kil any more), I guess my males will have to stay mateless.

Tank specs

30gal heavily planted
2 male rams
2 cockatoo dwarf cichlids(spawning)
2 golden panchaxes(pair)
tetras and pl*cos

Ammo - nil
Nitrite - nil
Nitrate - 30ppm
Ph - 6.8

T,
For reasons I have never understood, rams can be very touchy. Wild rams are particularly sensitive and I always loose a large chunk of my catch. That said, the survivors live forever and do very well. I believe that many of the "fancy" and captive bred rams in the hobby have also lost much of the species vigor (which was not much to start with as I said). My suggestions are to by 2-3 females and keep them in quarentine for a good month to make sure they are fat and healthy. If your male is being particularly aggressive, he will have to divide his attentions between multiple females and that should make things easier for them. I have also noticed that rams, in the wild, are found in huge concentrations. I am not saying that they school as adults, but they seem to all like to stay close to each other. These large groups may be key to their "normal" behaviour. I am keeping six wild caught rams (2 males and 4 females) in a 55 heavily planted tank and they always stay pretty much together in a group.
-Shane

It would be fair enough if the males were attacking the females but they dont.In fact my current female(which is still alive but not looking so hot)is pretty much being ignored.

Be careful with "fattening up". Mocrogeophagus (or Papiliochromis etc) are easily obstipated by too much food, and they die quickly when fed the wrong stuff.

bloodworms and such should be avoided; they'll like them allright, but many of the more fragile species die on this particular food.

I should go to another store if I were you!
I had the same problem, finding a mate (in this case a male) for my Mouthbrooding Betta (Betta cf fusca). The sad harvest now is three dead Betta males in a jar of ethanole. But I found one in another LFS and it does OK.

The males are fine though, mine even steal the pl*cos peas, but I cant keep a female alive for more than a week.I have tried 3 different shops now and always the same result.

BTW the female died sometime when I was at work today.To top it off she was right in the corner behind amazon swords.Right were my cockatoo dwarfs have spawned(I noticed this while searching for the body), I hope I didnt spook the female too much It was prett funny watching a cm long fish attacking my fingers for all she was worth.