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

[T1KARMANN]

i see the point you are trying to make but even a real fat ray with the hump at the back this hump will be gone within 8 hrs and the ray will be looking for food

in the wild rays spend a few hours covered in substrate i can only take it that they are full when they do this then back up looking for food

 

[rayman]

i feed my rays everyday

if i dont feed them eveyday they start trying to eat tankmates so i would take it they are are hungry

This is an good point. I visited once a raybreeder and his rays did not move very much. And he had some tankmates with the rays like altum with motoro. I asked myself why these rays where so lazy and did not eat the altum. So I asked the breeder and he told me how much he was feeding. It was very much. I told him if he want's his rays moving around in the tank he should not feed so much, best thing would be one day without food. The next day he told me that he did not feed them, but he will feed everyday again because the rays killed the altum.

Since then I call this method "to steady" a ray with food.
Hunting other fish is a normal behaviour of some rays and to feed them so much that they do not show this normal behaviour is too much food in my opinion. Some give the rays live feeder to exercise them, others feed so much that they do not hunt. There are many ways to keep rays.

 

[csx4236]

i feed my rays everyday

if i dont feed them eveyday they start trying to eat tankmates so i would take it they are are hungry

i wont stop feeding my ray everyday anytime soon

We feed 3 days in a row and then skip a day. We used to feed until all the rays could not eat anymore but was informed by a very good breeder that power-feeding like this was not good. I have also experienced my rays will fast for days at a time when we were feeding heavy everyday. Everyone has a system of feeding that works for them this is what works best for my rays. Our rays are always active and never just laying around for long period of time.

 

[T1KARMANN]

This is an good point. I visited once a raybreeder and his rays did not move very much. And he had some tankmates with the rays like altum with motoro. I asked myself why these rays where so lazy and did not eat the altum. So I asked the breeder and he told me how much he was feeding. It was very much. I told him if he want's his rays moving around in the tank he should not feed so much, best thing would be one day without food. The next day he told me that he did not feed them, but he will feed everyday again because the rays killed the altum.

Since then I call this method "to steady" a ray with food.
Hunting other fish is a normal behaviour of some rays and to feed them so much that they do not show this normal behaviour is too much food in my opinion. Some give the rays live feeder to exercise them, others feed so much that they do not hunt. There are many ways to keep rays.

i do feed my rays alot as they are still young below 10inch which i feel are still babys under 1yr old

i also feed river/ghost shrimp once per month to keep them hunting

my rays also go mad looking for food at night they turn over the substrate even pull down filters looking for food

its a hard thing to say what is to much food

what would you say is to much or not enought ?

i know it all depends on the size of the rays but for 3 x 8inch rays i only feed 2 big handfulls of pellets once per day sometime i also feed the same a 1am if they look hungry

 

[carcrazy]

I am still new to rays, having only had 2 motoro for a couple of months or so. When I got them they were about 8" across and now they are about 10" across. I feed them 3 market prawns 3 times a day. Should I cut down on the feedings? They seem pretty active all the time, going back and forth along the bottom and climbing the walls. I guess by their size they are still pretty young.

I placed a plastic ball cat toy in the tank for added stimulation (theirs and mine) and they seem to "like" moving it around and bouncing it off their disc (wish I had a video camera). You would think that they would have figured out it wasn't food after the first day, so it seems that they are playing with it.

 

[ernesto]

I just want to share with all those following this thread a few pics token in Venezuela. A friend of mine send me this and i would like to show you how is a wild ray in good shape. Im sure a lot of you have seen this more than a thousand times but for those who have not here they are:

http://www.mimbon.de/fishdb.html

Take a deep look on each picture.

Hope you enjoy it.

 

[Brent]

i have noticed that my rays wont eat everyday either when power feed they will fast

 

[severum1]

^^^^ Mine to

 

[T1KARMANN]

i can be feeding enought then as mine want food everyday

brent your rays are adults so they may not need as much food to grow

i normaly cut the food down to 1 feed per day when they get to 12inch +

 

[rayman]

i do feed my rays alot as they are still young below 10inch which i feel are still babys under 1yr old

its a hard thing to say what is to much food

what would you say is to much or not enought ?

i know it all depends on the size of the rays but for 3 x 8inch rays i only feed 2 big handfulls of pellets once per day sometime i also feed the same a 1am if they look hungry

Not enough is easy to say, if the rays lose weight they have parasites or not enough food.

Juvenile rays need more food than older ones that is allright.
Juvenile rays feed in the wild mainly on insect larvea or Isopods and other small things. All studies untill now show, that some species (the smaller rays) are insectivore the entire live, while other species start feeding on fish, shrimp and snails when they grow larger than 12".

Feeding young rays alot insect larvea is ok. I feed pups three times a day insect larvea untill they have a nice belly.

If you use other food with higher caloric content you need to calculate how much of this food is equivalent to the caloric content of feeding three times a day insect larvea.

It depends on the kind of food, mainly the protein and fat content, but a rough guess is to feed half the amount of fisch and shrimps and 1/5 of the amount when you feed pellets (my pellets have 50% protein and 10% fat).

For example, your rays can eat 100g bloodworms untill they full, the same caloric content is in 50g fish and 20g pellets.

The rays can eat 100g fish or 100g pellets too, but then they are overfeed.

I feed my two Itaituba rays (13.5" and 12.5") 50-60g fish/shrimps/mussels or 20g pellets per day and one day per week they get no food. Water temperature is 27-28°C (80.6-82.4F). With higher temperature you can feed more, lower temperature less.

Food content the rays cannot use for growing they store in the liver (mainly fat) or waste your water (faeces, ammonia through the gills). So you have to pay twice for to much food. You pay for the food and for water change to bring the excess nutriation out of your tank.

And overfed rays are more sensitive if they are stressed.
Even the stress of mating can lead to death, that happened once here in Germany, a male and female ray died during mating.

And in the actual case discussed in the german board possibly the ray was fat and stressed because of a missfunction of the filtration system. We will see what the vet find out.