Giant Male Marble Rescued and TLC'd

Went to a petstore in MD on thursday and they had a huuuuge male marble that was BEAUTIFUL but very near its death bed. a customer had returned the ray a few months back and it had been sitting int he petstore for months. the store grossly underfed the ray do to lack of knowledge. when i asked them what he ate they told me "he is a pig, eats anything!"

so i started throwing food in the tank and he pounced on it all but ate non. refused massivore, krill, shrimp, and silversides. then i threw in some earthworms and ghost shrimp and he did in fact pound that.

well to keep the ray from dying at their mercy, i bought it and took it home to my 75gal QT tank. he is in there now and eating some live canadian night crawlers but by no means is he filling up on them. he is thin as can be and you can see about 3/8" of pelvic bones! he also has a bunch of little white cottony tufts under his disc. i have never encountered this on a ray before but my best 2 guesses are that he is so nutritionally deficient that his immune system is depleted and he has sores assiociate with that OR that he has had some minor cuts/scrapes and they just havnt healed because of a lack of food.

i started hitting him with prazi thursday night night and he is still eating. anyone know what those white tufts are?

anyone have any experience with large adults that are super emaciated? how long before they start to develop the typical appetitie associated with healthy rays?

here is a photo of him for all to see. i'd say he was 2 weeks away from death at that pet store! lucky him and lucky me!! and becuase i know ill get this question... he is about 15" huuuuuge marble with huuuuuuuge calspers. cant wait to get him fixed up and into my 700!

turkeyboy85;3840558; said:

nice, i think the white looks more like left over stuff from the sand

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you cant see the white tufts int he photo. they are on the underside of the disc. he has them all around the edge of the disc. it looks like the white tufts some of my other rays get on the bottom of their discs when they scratch themselves. that photo is of him in a 180 at the store with sand. he is in a bare bottom 75 at home now. we'll see how it goes.... he is eating slowly but surely so that is def a good thing!

jwong1024;3840776; said:

Wow nice ray, getting him from a LFS must have cost a pretty penny. I wonder why such a beatiful thing was returned? Maybe he ate some of his tankmates? Or maybe there are some people out there who do know when they can no longer take care of a fish.

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if you knew what i paid for it you would not believe it! lets just say i paid less for that fish than most people would have paid for a regular motoro pup. the store just knew it as a motoro and wanted it OUT OF THERE because it was taking up valuable tank/selling space. it was for sale there for many months and no one bought it!!!

it doesnt matter anyway... if i didnt buy it, it would have died in the store or whoever bought it would have probably killed it!