Female Blue Ram

Question
Hi there. Please can you help me? I am relatively new to tropical fishkeeping. My tank is a Juwel Rekord 70 with the integral filter system. It has live plants, bogwood and sand substrate. The water temperature is set to 28 degrees with a PH of 7.4. The inhabitants are a young Bristlenose Plec, 2 Glowlight Sunset Platys (plus one 7 week old platy born in the tank) 3 Sterbai Cory, 3 phantom tetras, 3 rosy tetras and a pair of Blue Rams. It is the female Blue Ram that concerns me. She has always been quite small and about a month after we got her she lost her colour, energy and started staying at the top of the tank breathing rapidly. With careful monitoring, regular water changes and reduced feeding she started to pick up. She now swims around quite happily making full use of the tank and she even has a dark pink belly which I understand to mean that she is ready to spawn. This may sound OK but over the last week or so I have noticed that one of her gill flaps has swollen so that when she turns away from me I can see the dark pink flesh underneath when it opens. Am I being a neurotic fishkeeper or is there something I should be doing. I was told by our local aquarium guy that I should not treat water with chemicals unless I am absolutely sure something is up and as she seems quite happy I was wondering if there is anything else I should be looking for. Also my other fish in the main seem OK apart from a quite (almost unsociably shy) Cory and my Plec lays under the bogwood "bridge" upside down, not actually attached (maybe that sounds odd). I would love to hear your thoughts on this and any advice you may have for me. Kind regards Nikki

Answer
80% of blue rams nowadays are bred in asia. Asian bred rams are injected with hormones that make them colorful at first, but they soon lose their color and die.

Chance are, if you paid under $15 for your ram, it is asian bred, and will not live long regardless of what you do. Try to select rams for a local breeder, or rams that came from Europe.

-Nick