# Sick Ram, advice please.



## Zortch (Nov 3, 2010)

I am fish-sitting my sister-in-law's blue ram while she moves. The ram was in a 5gal with a female betta, but I removed the betta a few days ago due to some fighting issues. 
A couple days after the betta was removed, the ram became reclusive and stopped eating. He now sits still sometimes at the top of the tank sometimes at the bottom and breaths rapidly. I increased the aeration but this didn't help with the breathing and did a water change. Parameters seem fine. 
I don't know anything specific to cichlids as I don't have any of my own - could this be "bloat"? I read a little bit about it and the symptoms line up somewhat. Any advice would be very helpful.


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## panther2009 (Jun 23, 2010)

Ram needs warm water 82~85 F and very clean water. Ram will need company too. Keep Ram alone is no good IME.


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## Zortch (Nov 3, 2010)

Dead when I got home. Not sure what happened *sigh*


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## adrenaline (Jan 17, 2011)

so sorry to hear that...

Weird things happen with fish sometimes. I had an entire species of Pseudo. Flavus cichlids die off 1 by 1 until they were all gone. Everything else in the tank was perfectly fine, all paramaters checked out too  luckily i had a few batches of their babies i'm still growing out, but it was horrible to go through. they were fully grown breeders too...


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