Ram mates clamped fins, motionless

Hi All,

I have a mated pair of electric blue rams and they laid eggs on Monday night. The male guarded the perimeter of the eggs for 99% of the time while the female guarded a wider radius chasing off fish that came a bit too close.

Friday morning I noticed the male was no longer on duty and the female was where he had been for three days straight. I don't see the eggs anymore, nor am I too worried about them as it was their first batch ( I had planned to do every possible to get fry thought I didn't have another cycled tank ready yet as I didn't even know they were pairer, let alone male and female, until the eggs appeared).

Now the male and female are near the heater motionless with clamped fins and rear fins seems slightly folded onto itself.

I was also in the process of a 7 day Melafix treatment to help frayed fins of my balloon rams which were new additions from two weeks ago. Yesterday I did a 30% water change and again today.

All the other fish are fine though and appear very lively and healthy. The couple did move and get a bit excited at feeding time this morning though which relieved me.

Is it possible they are just exhausted from defending eggs for 4 days and chasing off fish etc? Or perhaps demoralized if they lost the eggs or something??

Please help first time ram keeper. Water quality is great and it's a community tank with 10 rasboras, 4 balloon rams, the mated pair, another EBR and a longfin gold ram.

Also 8 corydoras and a pleco. 50 gal running at 82 degrees.

Please help and sorry for lengthy post!!!!

SBN

 

Aren't they guarding some tiny fry ?

 

Welcome to the forum

Clamped fins to me signals something to do with the water quality but it is strange that they are doing this only recently and are the only ones showing symptoms. Can you post your parameters - pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrates?

 

Hmm I don't think they are guarding tiny fry I don't see anything... I don't know sadly I had to leave today and will only be back tomorrow...

 

Yeah only started yesterday and the other fish are doing swimmingly. Okay bad pub quota met...

Ph is 7 and no ammonia. Nitrite is low but nitrate was a kinda high prior to water changes.

 

So no one has ever heard of this being typical to post eggs laying?