Sting Ray Tank Mates... experience guide please input!

Pazzoman

Piranha
MFK Member
Apr 5, 2009
2,991
32
81
New York
Hey Everybody,

I notice throughout numerous searches and such I see that one of the most difficult things of keeping rays is the idea of housing them with tankmates. I read this sticky on the ancient fish thread about tank mates for gars. A member- Xander had came up with a great idea on how to evaluate tankmates for gars based on members experinces and observations. Here is how it goes:

Copy and paste the following and continue to fill up the blanks to participate!!

Tankmate family/common name - family name(or members)/scientific name

Members' experience :

Species & Size of Gar:

Size of tank:

Size of tankmate:


Duration of cohabitation:


Comments (pros and cons, other comments)

Pros:

Cons:

Other Comments:

Members' overall compatibility rating : #/10
(include experience on aggression, spooking, etc)
This Section will be subject to moderation, inclusion and exclusion depending on the quality of post and the legitability of individual posts.
__________________________________________________ ____________________________________________

reGARding the "Members' overall compatibility rating : #/10" section, one is free to have his own rating rubrix. but here's mine. nothing to quote me by, but something i find rather useful from a hobbyist point of view when deciding if i should try a tankmate.

water body requirements (slow moving vs fast moving) - 2 points
tendency to spook/cause spooking - 2 points
boisterious/aggressive/territorial behavior - 2 points
tendency to draw aggression from gars - 2 points
misc - 2 points

Xander rates each tankmate based on those 5 items, rating them from 0-2 and adding the scores. of course, certain factors (such as slime sucking behavior from plecos or insane territorial behaviour from aggressive cichlids (ime, oscar)) will over ride this rubrix.


Thank You to Xander for your post in the gar section as this could come in great help in the stingray section.

Please input! I look forward to hearing your ideas of tankmates and such...hope this will be helpful to new or soon to be ray owners like myself.

(Also I used yellow text to show all the work Xander had put into his sticky in the gar section)
 

Pazzoman

Piranha
MFK Member
Apr 5, 2009
2,991
32
81
New York
Tankmate family/common name - Silver Dollars

Members' experience : Newb at the time

Species & Size of Stingray: Potamotrygon Motoro Stingray at 6 inche disc

Size of tank: 75 Gallon Tank (at the time I was a rookie and followed what lfs said about tank requirments, however now I'm much more experinced and smarter

Size of tankmate: 2-3 inches


Duration of cohabitation: 6 months before motoro was given to someone with larger tank


Comments (pros and cons, other comments)

Pros- The silvers had no interest in the ray
Looked great schooling around the tank
Did a great job cleaning up scraps of bloodworms from the ray
Seem to have a similar growth per month so this helped keeping them safe from the ray as well as unable to do harm to the ray

Cons- Occasionally the ray would attempt to pounce on the silvers when they are surrounded by blood worms but had always released them

Compatibly Rating: 10/10

I rate the silver dollar and motoro stingray combo a 10/10 as long as the silvers are a decent size compared to the rays mouth (3x the size of the rays mouth)
 

Raymann88

Candiru
MFK Member
Jul 1, 2011
606
8
48
Canada
Arowanas (Asian or South American) make great tank mates. They grow large enough not to be bothered by the rays and stay near the surface. They tend to leave rays alone. I've had mine with rays for 4 years. Even had pups born with Arowanas in the tank with no harm to the pups. I stay away from other bottom dwelling fish as they tend to compete with rays for space and food.
 

Pazzoman

Piranha
MFK Member
Apr 5, 2009
2,991
32
81
New York
Thanks for the info guys, when ever you guys have a chance can you post it as the way it looks above? I think it will help better explain how they are housed together.

Thank you again george and ray for not letting this thread sink lol
 

AhKwaB

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Nov 7, 2012
23
0
0
NO
Tankmate family/common name - family name(or members)/scientific name: Thin black bar silver dollars/Myleus Schomborgkii

Members' experience : Works out great!

Species & Size of Ray: Motoro, 3-12"

Size of tank: 8x2x2

Size of tankmate: 3-5"


Duration of cohabitation: 5m


Comments (pros and cons, other comments)

Pros: The Myleus are fast enough to escape the rays death cup attack

Cons: The Myleus go after food faster than the rays notice

Other Comments:


Gives a good visual display and a school of them is even more awesome looking!
 

rlane

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Jun 6, 2012
310
87
31
Morristown, NJ
I keep mine with a bunch of peacock bass, they all get along great. It is a pain sometimes to get the food to the bottom, but using tongs and PVC pipe makes it work.
 
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