Overfeeding Stingrays?? Lead to problems down the road??

[ernesto]

I´ve been working with rays and sharks for a long time in public aquariums and i´ve learned a few things that i apply to mine:
1.- Sharks and rays in captivity eat 2-3% of body weigth weekly.
2.- There are a brand of Shark and Rays vitamin supplement called MAZURI wich is used for almost every shark aquarium in the world.
3.- You HAVE to vary their diet week to week as they´re searching for food all the time(but not eating all the time) in different places where the food items available may vary.
4.- You HAVE to include in their diet things like: exoeskeletons (quitine, calcium), shells, bones, meat and vegetal matter. The only way to do so is to raise some items at home (like shrimps) and feed them properly or buy only freshwater animals as fresh as possible.
I´ve started two cultures, shrimps and earthworms eating lettuce, cucumber, fish food and spinachs to offer home made live food to my rays. Once a week they´ll get 1/4 pill of MAZURI´s vitamin supplement.

This is my feeding program wich i adapted from aquariums i´ve work in.
Hope this help.

P.S.: I´m really sorry about my english....

 

[Wimmels]

No problem your English is quite good

What kind of schrimps do you grow up? Salt or freshwater? I would like a description of this, as I want to try to grow or keep my own shrimp as well.

I wanted to try to catch some "Holland" shrimp which live in the sea. Appearantly they do survive in freshwater(they turn blue then) but someone warned me that these shrimp are very canabalistic which means I won't be able to keep them a long time in freshwater

 

[ernesto]

I´m now raising "Caridina sp.", "Palaemonetes sp." and "Macrobrachium sp.", they´re not canibalistic at all and breed very well, freshwater the three of them. Also you can try with almost every freshwater shrimp that you can find at your LFS. Also i´ll feed them once a week 1 freshwater crab live "Procambarus clarkii" with no claws, but only to the adult.

 

[rayman]

I´ve been working with rays and sharks for a long time in public aquariums and i´ve learned a few things that i apply to mine:
1.- Sharks and rays in captivity eat 2-3% of body weigth weekly.

This depends on the species, the age, holding temperature and nutriation content of food. A very good reading is Chapter 14 of the Elasmobranch Husbandry Manual:
http://www.colszoo.org/internal/elasmo_2005/page2.htm

For freshwater stingrays there was a field study on orbignyi. Result was that they eat 2.2% body weight per day on insect larvea.

I´ve started two cultures, shrimps and earthworms

I started to breed red cherry shrimps, these are easy to breed and tolerate low temperatures.

 

[ernesto]

I was talking about my experience and we have done it like this everywhere i´ve worked in. Of course there is a difference based on age and species, but i said 2-3% as a general rule for adults.
That´s a very good source of info that one you linked i´m sure a lot of people will read and use it.

 

[MeAko]

I guess, most of the posts in this thread doesn't apply to baby rays? I'm new to ray keeping and have looked at the FAQs in this site to guide me.

I've had my 8 inch motoro for 3 weeks now. It was stressed in the beginning and did not want food for the first 3-4 days.

After the first bite, it was pretty good as it ate a pinch of MP twice everyday the first week or two and when I was running out of shrimp, I segued into Pangasius fillet.

I feed it once in the morning and 3-5x at night just a pinch every time.

My question is, when do I stop?

 

[ShadowStryder]

This was a very informational read.

 

[Mr. Allgood]

This depends on the species, the age, holding temperature and nutriation content of food. A very good reading is Chapter 14 of the Elasmobranch Husbandry Manual:
http://www.colszoo.org/internal/elasmo_2005/page2.htm

For freshwater stingrays there was a field study on orbignyi. Result was that they eat 2.2% body weight per day on insect larvea.


I started to breed red cherry shrimps, these are easy to breed and tolerate low temperatures.

I wish that link still worked! I do love bumping old threads though Any other intelligent input for this ancient thread?

 

[giar]

Up

 

[Peckoltia]

Good read for the most part this thread.

I think the main incorrect assumption for me is if a Ray (or other animal) is willing to eat, then it must be 'hungry'. It is an animal, they are programmed to eat when food is available. In a wild setting animals don't know when their next meal will be, whether it be in 10 minutes time or a week, so if food is there, they eat. My rays would eat until they exploded, do they 'need' this much food? Absolutely not.

My feeding regime has changed a lot over the years. At the moment I feed my animals in this way. 5 days of the week I feed them relatively lightly, that is one shot glass full of pellets - between 5 large bass and 4 'adult' rays (10-15"), on the sixth day I will absolutely stuff them full of food, a feed of pellets followed by a generous serve of frozen seafood - usually fillets of fish, silver sides or squid (or a combination). I then pump a large 50% water change that afternoon followed by a smaller 10-15% water change the next day to siphon out any large pieces of crap that the heavy feeding produces (this is also meal skip day). Then repeat the process. My way of thinking is that rays like any animal would be opportunistic in their feeding habits - and probably do get to feed most days (5 days a week light), every once in a while they will get lucky with a big meal (my heavy meal day), and every so often unlucky (meal skip day). I think the meal skip day is also beneficial for their digestive system to get a bit of a flush. I have skipped feeding for a day with pregnant females with no ill effects. So far this has worked well for me. My rays are bang on two years old and all 3 girls are 15" and the male 10" (male bit younger at 18months and has sired two batches of pups) and have had one batch of pups already and one that is due to give birth in about 4 weeks.

Pups are a different story, pump as much food into them as regularly as you want until they hit about 6-8" to give them to best start in life possible.

These are just my observations and are based on my own anecdotal evidence.