Powder blue Rams

Hi guys and girls,

As some of you know I have been doing some work with the very pretty Ram ciclid over the past year or so.
I have had some success with having them breed for me and have lotsa fun with them.

I have been attempting-for the second time to duplicate a new type of Ram, called the Powder blue Ram. It was first bred and coined the name by an American breeder a few years back.

I have finally reached the goal and now have some young fish which will form part of my broodstock for these beauties. They are just about ready to start spawning.

Here are some photos of a young male.
Hope you like!





Regards

Marco

 

Nice work man. Looks very nice with the yellow on the faces

 

They look awesome.

 

Beautiful fish @Marco

If you don't mind what fishes did you use to achieve this result?
What generation is he of the above spawns?

Sorry first time I see one like this so very curious

 

Wow that looks awesome. Would love to get hold of some of them. Good Work @Marco :top:

 

Thanks for the replies guys,
@hein24 - these are 3rd generation fish. A small % are now as I was hoping them to be.
These were initially from Electric blue and Golden lineage. Im still holding out to see if the shape turns out the way I like and want it - which is bulky with a strong almost lumpy head.
The other issue I had was selecting for Red eyes. The original USA variety had golden-yellow eyes which I did not like. So I selected only F2 fish with Red eyes to breed from.
Its early days as these guys are now only 11 weeks old - I'll wait till 16th week and then decide next step. Maybe they need a bit of tweaking before I try and "fix" the line.
Have another type I wish to breed towards so gotta get this fixed and then start afresh.

The biggest issue for me has been controlling and selling the offspring. You gotta breed lots to get this done and the SA market is saturated very quickly.
Its been fun though

Marco

 

Thanks for sharing @Marco.
It's really impressive that you got these at F3 stages, usually they only start to become predominantly noticed in F4.
I couldn't agree more with you the Red eyes has an awesome effect on the overall appearance of the fish, hence I mentioned saying seeing a fish like this for the first time in my earlier post.

(as mentioned before I will take some fishes off your hands)

 

Lekker....good work @Marco

 

@Marco setup is awesome! Goeie werk inderdaad!

 

Thanks guys. Hopefully get to breed these buggers now so that soon we have them freely available.

 

Hi, by any chance is this one of yours?

I've had him a few months and it seems to match what you're describing so I've been wondering if I ended up with one of your little guys.

 

Hi @Rich.P

Nope that is in fact not one of mine. That is a nice Electric blue Ram. You will notice it has some black in the face (eye-bar) which the Powder blue (and golden variety) does not have.
Electtic blues are also stunning looking Rams. Nice fish you have there.

Rgds

Marco

 

I quote" Nice fish you have there." @Marco.

 

Ah, thank you. I was curious because the store I got them from had mentioned that they were locally bred. After seeing this post I was curious

 

Lol thank you @Mike Roos,
@Rich.P
Its quite possible that its locally bred. Not by me though. I only have some Electric blues available now so that one definitly not from me.
Lots of shops tend to say that these are locally bred. I presume it is to add 'life expectancy' value to them as most Electric blue Rams die prematurely for no apparent reason.
That said these could very well be from local bred stock-Im sure there are people out there breeding these now.

Rgds

Marco

 

I have heard that some of the overseas breeders inject the rams with stimulants for growth etc. Which would explain the early deaths....

However, these guys are growing nice and slow so there's none of that rubbish present thankfully.

I trust my lfs thankfully.

 

Great work @Marco! Those guys look great And if you are willing to ship to durban I would gladly take some of your very busy hands ;-)

 

Hi @Titan

Thank you. I actually have some Powder blue Rams which will be ready in about 2 to 3 weeks. They are starting to fill up on colour now and I will keep them back untill they are nice and blue.
My Powder blue line still needs a bit of work to get to where I want them but they should be there within another 2 or 3 generations.

Rgds

Marco

 

It's a pleasure @Marco those guys are really stunning and you should be very proud of what you have achieved!
I've seen a picture of these guys some time back and wanted to get a few so when you're ready keep me in mind :grinning:


Regards
Titan