Motoro Sting Ray Care (Potymotrygon Motoro):
In this blog we will discuss about keeping fresh water Sting Rays especially Motoro Sting Rays.
Before beginning you must first understand that "THESE ARE NOT THE FISHES FOR BEGINNERS".I would suggest you to first get some experience through fishes like an Oscar or Cichlids or Flowerhorn or even a common Silver Arowana ,they will give you enough experience of keeping large and sensitive fishes if you have some prior experience of keeping fishes; if you don't have any experience then you should just forget about them and start with gold fishes.
In care of any variety of sting rays some basic things which should be kept in mind are:
1. Water quality: they are very sensitive towards water quality, if the level of ammonia and nitrates rises in water the effect can be seen clearly on them like sluggishness and lack of interest in food etc. and if it rises above a certain level then they may even die ,so, while keeping them keep strict check on water parameters, i will recommend purchasing test kits for various parameters like ammonia, nitrite and nitrate they are easily available at good fish stores, look for a trustworthy brand for test kits, i personally have used kits from "tetra" over the years for every tank of mine and they have given me satisfactory results even for my planted tanks.
Good filtration is a must, you must opt for different medias for filtration for all types i.e. physical, chemical and biological filtration. You can use normal filter media for physical filtration of debris and dirt, bioceramics for biological filtration and activated charcoal for chemical filtration, look for a filter with multiple compartments and medias and good filtration capacity. go for more than one filter because filters always turn out to be underhand when used so better safe than sorry and use more than one filter.
A rule of thumb for selecting filter for any tank is that the filter pump should be able to circulate whole water of your tank at least 2-3 times in an hour. So if your tank capacity is for eg. 500 ltrs so the pump of your filter should have a capacity of at least 1000 ltr/hr. If you can get external filters then they are best but since they are costly (good ones start around 8000 rs.) so you can opt for a multiple compartment external canister filter with strong pump and a strong internal filter which doesn't cause much agitation in water, for aeration you can provide bubble aerators. In my opinion power filters with aeration should be avoided because they agitate the water so much that its disturbing for rays.
For water change i would suggest 40-50% of water change every week or 10 days at the most that too if you have good filtration system.
They also need constant temperature between 24- 28 degrees Celsius so you will need to provide a thermostat of adequate power in the tank and also provide a thermostat guard over the thermostat so that they don't get burned from it if at all they touch it since Ray injuries are difficult to heal.
2. Size: when you are thinking about tanks for sting Rays think BIG. since they will grow to have a disk size of at least 10 inches so you can imagine what kind of space requirements they will need. For Sting rays the tank should be constructed with more width than height since they don't swim in water rather glide on the substrate so your tank should have an adequate length and width but you can cut short its height.
3. Aquascaping: Sting rays need more of an open area to swim so personally i feel there is not much need of Aquascaping in their tanks but if you want to keep decorations keep only those which don't have sharp edges since sharp edges and corners may hurt them and cause infections, you may find different opinions about tank decoration on net but i have successfully kept them in a tank with minimum decorations and more swimming space and i think they are happy in it.
4. Substrate: Sting rays need soft substrate so that they can easily glide over it and hide in it without injuring themselves, this is very important as your rays will spend a large amount of time hiding in the substrate and hunting so forget about gravels and pebbles what you need is sand and that too of fine variety with no pebbles and coarse grains which could cause an injury to the rays disc.
5. diet: they should be fed feeder fishes, shrimps, earthworms (if you can ensure they are healthy or breed them on your own) and my fishes also liked sinking pellet food from tetra so i would give this also to them occasionally albeit pellet food was needed in large quantities. Since i had a breeding colonies of shrimps like ghost shrimps and red shrimps so i used them also as feed for sting rays, i would place some of them in the ray tank so that they can hunt and feed on their own.
6. Tankmates: ideally i would suggest you to keep a dedicated tank for sting rays only, but if you still want to keep them with other fishes then keep in mind that other fishes should be large enough so that they don't confuse them as their food and their is enough space for both of them to avoid any hostilities. they can go around easily with Arowanas, Oscars and in my opinion Discus and Carps. I kept mine with a pair of Discus fishes and a pair of Milky Carps which were large enough to escape them and were not hostile towards them at all. i would feed Discus Special food from Tetra for Discus and Tetra bits for Carps ( Yes i am a big fan of Tetra :) ) and fed sting rays a variety of diet which i have mentioned above.
" Do not keep them with plecos especially common plecos which are sold in India as crocodile fishes and harmless fishes which can clean the tank, they may be harmless towards other fishes but they have the tendency to stick on the discs of Sting rays and suck the slime coat over them causing them injury and an injured sting ray is the last thing you will want in your tank."
Last but not the least-
7. Keeping Venomous fishes: Keep in mind that rays are Venomous, they have a stinger hidden in their tail which you can see clearly if you see them up close which is venomous and may cause a painful wound if you are stung by it, also not much is known about about the venom of stingray and anti venom is not available for it, although the fatalities are very rare and that too in wild, not in pet conditions, neverthless you can't ignore the risk even if it may be rare. The wounds are said to be painful and take long time to heal. If you are stung by it then immediately dip you hand in hot water for some time then go to nearest Hospital at your earliest, since effective anti venom for them is not available and let's face it in the middle of the city no one expects you to get bitten by sting rays so clearly explain to your doctor what has happened and expect that he provides you symptomatic relief and care so that there are no complications and also may consider you "Mad". But cheer up they are not dangerous and not at all aggressive, i have kept them since 3 years now and see i am alive today to tell you the tale and other ray keepers which are in contact with me over the years have never been stung by them and i don't think it will happen to anyone unless you start playing Hero and try to catch them in you hands. But you should keep the caution in mind while keeping them and remember these are not the type of fish to play with.
In my opinion the major problem is their discarded stingers which they shed every 6-8 months or so depending on their growth, these are left in the substrate and if you are careless while cleaning their tank then you may carelessly touch one of those and since they retain their poison for long time so i suggest great care while cleaning their tank or doing anything inside their tank. All the technical stuff should be assembled and done outside the tank and your hands should go inside only for placing them.
Now my Experience along with some Pics:
I made a tank of 5' length x 3' width x 1.5' height for my motoro rays from the start so that they have enough of space to roam around and grow and since they are one of the smaller varieties so i think this size is adequate.
Since i ordered them in advance and i knew that they will take around 15-20 days in coming so i set up my tank and started water cycling immediately so that the tank and water is ready immediately on their arrival.
when they came i acclimatized them to the water first by using repeated changes in their storage bag , after about 3 hrs this process was completed and then i slowly released them in the tank .
As you can see i have provided much of open space for them with only a drift wood for decoration and maintaining the quality of water.
the care of them has already been described by me above. Any queries can be posted in the comments section and i will try my best to resolve them.
By:
Dr. Siddharth Mishra
In this blog we will discuss about keeping fresh water Sting Rays especially Motoro Sting Rays.
Before beginning you must first understand that "THESE ARE NOT THE FISHES FOR BEGINNERS".I would suggest you to first get some experience through fishes like an Oscar or Cichlids or Flowerhorn or even a common Silver Arowana ,they will give you enough experience of keeping large and sensitive fishes if you have some prior experience of keeping fishes; if you don't have any experience then you should just forget about them and start with gold fishes.
In care of any variety of sting rays some basic things which should be kept in mind are:
1. Water quality: they are very sensitive towards water quality, if the level of ammonia and nitrates rises in water the effect can be seen clearly on them like sluggishness and lack of interest in food etc. and if it rises above a certain level then they may even die ,so, while keeping them keep strict check on water parameters, i will recommend purchasing test kits for various parameters like ammonia, nitrite and nitrate they are easily available at good fish stores, look for a trustworthy brand for test kits, i personally have used kits from "tetra" over the years for every tank of mine and they have given me satisfactory results even for my planted tanks.
Good filtration is a must, you must opt for different medias for filtration for all types i.e. physical, chemical and biological filtration. You can use normal filter media for physical filtration of debris and dirt, bioceramics for biological filtration and activated charcoal for chemical filtration, look for a filter with multiple compartments and medias and good filtration capacity. go for more than one filter because filters always turn out to be underhand when used so better safe than sorry and use more than one filter.
A rule of thumb for selecting filter for any tank is that the filter pump should be able to circulate whole water of your tank at least 2-3 times in an hour. So if your tank capacity is for eg. 500 ltrs so the pump of your filter should have a capacity of at least 1000 ltr/hr. If you can get external filters then they are best but since they are costly (good ones start around 8000 rs.) so you can opt for a multiple compartment external canister filter with strong pump and a strong internal filter which doesn't cause much agitation in water, for aeration you can provide bubble aerators. In my opinion power filters with aeration should be avoided because they agitate the water so much that its disturbing for rays.
For water change i would suggest 40-50% of water change every week or 10 days at the most that too if you have good filtration system.
They also need constant temperature between 24- 28 degrees Celsius so you will need to provide a thermostat of adequate power in the tank and also provide a thermostat guard over the thermostat so that they don't get burned from it if at all they touch it since Ray injuries are difficult to heal.
2. Size: when you are thinking about tanks for sting Rays think BIG. since they will grow to have a disk size of at least 10 inches so you can imagine what kind of space requirements they will need. For Sting rays the tank should be constructed with more width than height since they don't swim in water rather glide on the substrate so your tank should have an adequate length and width but you can cut short its height.
3. Aquascaping: Sting rays need more of an open area to swim so personally i feel there is not much need of Aquascaping in their tanks but if you want to keep decorations keep only those which don't have sharp edges since sharp edges and corners may hurt them and cause infections, you may find different opinions about tank decoration on net but i have successfully kept them in a tank with minimum decorations and more swimming space and i think they are happy in it.
4. Substrate: Sting rays need soft substrate so that they can easily glide over it and hide in it without injuring themselves, this is very important as your rays will spend a large amount of time hiding in the substrate and hunting so forget about gravels and pebbles what you need is sand and that too of fine variety with no pebbles and coarse grains which could cause an injury to the rays disc.
5. diet: they should be fed feeder fishes, shrimps, earthworms (if you can ensure they are healthy or breed them on your own) and my fishes also liked sinking pellet food from tetra so i would give this also to them occasionally albeit pellet food was needed in large quantities. Since i had a breeding colonies of shrimps like ghost shrimps and red shrimps so i used them also as feed for sting rays, i would place some of them in the ray tank so that they can hunt and feed on their own.
6. Tankmates: ideally i would suggest you to keep a dedicated tank for sting rays only, but if you still want to keep them with other fishes then keep in mind that other fishes should be large enough so that they don't confuse them as their food and their is enough space for both of them to avoid any hostilities. they can go around easily with Arowanas, Oscars and in my opinion Discus and Carps. I kept mine with a pair of Discus fishes and a pair of Milky Carps which were large enough to escape them and were not hostile towards them at all. i would feed Discus Special food from Tetra for Discus and Tetra bits for Carps ( Yes i am a big fan of Tetra :) ) and fed sting rays a variety of diet which i have mentioned above.
" Do not keep them with plecos especially common plecos which are sold in India as crocodile fishes and harmless fishes which can clean the tank, they may be harmless towards other fishes but they have the tendency to stick on the discs of Sting rays and suck the slime coat over them causing them injury and an injured sting ray is the last thing you will want in your tank."
Last but not the least-
7. Keeping Venomous fishes: Keep in mind that rays are Venomous, they have a stinger hidden in their tail which you can see clearly if you see them up close which is venomous and may cause a painful wound if you are stung by it, also not much is known about about the venom of stingray and anti venom is not available for it, although the fatalities are very rare and that too in wild, not in pet conditions, neverthless you can't ignore the risk even if it may be rare. The wounds are said to be painful and take long time to heal. If you are stung by it then immediately dip you hand in hot water for some time then go to nearest Hospital at your earliest, since effective anti venom for them is not available and let's face it in the middle of the city no one expects you to get bitten by sting rays so clearly explain to your doctor what has happened and expect that he provides you symptomatic relief and care so that there are no complications and also may consider you "Mad". But cheer up they are not dangerous and not at all aggressive, i have kept them since 3 years now and see i am alive today to tell you the tale and other ray keepers which are in contact with me over the years have never been stung by them and i don't think it will happen to anyone unless you start playing Hero and try to catch them in you hands. But you should keep the caution in mind while keeping them and remember these are not the type of fish to play with.
In my opinion the major problem is their discarded stingers which they shed every 6-8 months or so depending on their growth, these are left in the substrate and if you are careless while cleaning their tank then you may carelessly touch one of those and since they retain their poison for long time so i suggest great care while cleaning their tank or doing anything inside their tank. All the technical stuff should be assembled and done outside the tank and your hands should go inside only for placing them.
Now my Experience along with some Pics:
I made a tank of 5' length x 3' width x 1.5' height for my motoro rays from the start so that they have enough of space to roam around and grow and since they are one of the smaller varieties so i think this size is adequate.
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| tank For Sting Rays. |
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| Rays Immediately on arrival. |
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| Shy from attention |
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| beauty from beneath |
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| exploring!! |
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| My pair of Motoro rays. |
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| Tank mates!! |
By:
Dr. Siddharth Mishra
