Twitching motoro

mikehagan

Candiru
MFK Member
Oct 17, 2011
572
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Pittsburgh
Got this ray 4 days ago. Ate in blackworms in store, ate blackworms first night in my tank. The past two days its been doing this weird twitch has been ignoring blackworms. I wanted to hear from some ray keepers to see whats going on. Definitely wasnt acting like this at the store when I watched it. Ammonia is 0, nitrite is 0, and nitrates are at 30. Temp was at 75 but I set the heat at 80 now. Tank mates are a 12" arowana, 12" clown knife, and 5 16-20" bichirs. None of them have even showed interest in the ray. Tank is a 180.

Heres a video. A higher quality one will be posted tomorrow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzHBquy1ySc
 

Ade

Piranha
MFK Member
Jun 7, 2008
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London
Something looks to be irritating it. Could be substrate.
But id be concerned it has stopped feeding. Its already killing thin.
Could be stress from transport or stress from other fish when lights are out and your in bed.
Keep an eye out for more erratic movements..heavy breathing. Breathing only out of.one spherical.
If you get these sysmtoms could be gill flukes.

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FishDog

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MFK Member
Jan 2, 2008
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He does look a little irritated but nothing I would be concerned about at this point. Why you raising the temp you trying to cook him? High temps cause them to breathe harder because of lower oxygen. You can add salt but it will probably do nothing but make you feel better. If it were me I would get temp back to 77ish and just watch him. If you see red spots on his belly, ulcers in bottom of his feet or his tail tip turning white then let us know and we can recomend a treatment. Us fish keepers usually cause more harm by reacting when there is most likely nothing wrong in the first place.


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FishDog

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Blackworms all he has ever ate? I have owned lots of rays that would not eat blackworms. Now ghost shrimp are a different story. There could be a couple of things going on in your tank but most likely it is stress related. Those are some big bichirs sharing the bottom and some big fish swimming over head compared to size of the ray. High heat and salt is a compliment to an antibiotic treatment but by themselves has little affect. The one thing I tell most people is when something changes like a ray stops eating try to find out if something changed or if a stresser can be identified. The last thing you want to do is change the environment on a ray that could already be stressed by his environment. You start changing things rapidly it could compound the problem. Always remember keep the water clean stabilise and observe. Only react when you know what you are reacting to. The first time I bought a ray I put it with a weeksii bichir and I caught the bichir biting the ray one day. It did not leave a mark and shortly after the ray stopped eating. Come to find out the bichir was stressing the ray but had I not seen that bite happen I would of never known the problem.

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mikehagan

Candiru
MFK Member
Oct 17, 2011
572
5
48
Pittsburgh
Temp hardly got to 82 when I turned it down to 80. I will keep a close eye on the bichirs, but they have not even sniffed the ray in the past 5 days from what i have seen.

Yes, blackworms are all that they feed the rays at the LFS is bought it from. When I introduce food into the tank he definitely starts to move around the tank. Maybe I was just too worried.
 
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