Male Henlei wasting away.

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FireMedic

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Dec 13, 2007
805
36
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Middle of somewhere, Oulu Wisconsin
I am open to advice from any Henlei owners. I have a male, wild caught Henlei. He has been with me not quite one year. I have treated him multiple times for internal/external parasites, fungus, you name it. He seems to be wasting away, loss of appetite, loss of activity. Water is excellent. I have offered him every food I can imagine. He is quarantined. I have increased/decreased temps. Added salt. Done water changes. You name it.
I am looking for any sound advice from those that have similar experiences. I would really like to salvage this guy.
Thank you.
 
has he been like this the whole time u owned him?

hate to say it but i would prob try force feeding at this point
 
I got my male WC henlei in may of last year, he was about 15". He wasn't skinny but it seems that he was the pickiest ray that I've had (motoros, leos, castexi and hystrix).

He'd eat some food and two days later, I see his pelvic bones again...

I checked his poop while he was in QT, it looks normal..

So I started to do a massive feeding frenzy 2-3 times a day...I'd feed him 30 nightcrawlers a day and about 10 shrimps (that was all he wanted to eat). I did this for about 3 months before his tail started to get very thick. During this time, he becomes a lot more active, if I dropped one piece of food, he started to scale the wall over 10 feet long tank lol.

Basically, I went back to the basic, I don't run heaters, I let the tank temp goes along with the house ambient temp (74-79 degrees), keep dripping like normal (120 gallon for 600 gallon tank), stop all meds and let him be...

It takes patience and a lot of time but he'll be worth it in the end...he's now about 17" and I didn't feed the tank while I was on vacation for a week and hos pelvic never shows up again..

Stan
 
Try different food if you haven't try it yet..

Ghost shrimps, mussels, scallops, all kind of worms, beefheart.....once he get used to eating, it'll be easy.

My henlei would only take 2 shrimps as a time, over time, his appetite grew bigger
 
Tim ,basically go back to basics is right .Start him off on live black worms and then onto night crawlers.I had to do the same for a female i have.
 
FireMedic said:
I am open to advice from any Henlei owners. I have a male, wild caught Henlei. He has been with me not quite one year. I have treated him multiple times for internal/external parasites, fungus, you name it. He seems to be wasting away, loss of appetite, loss of activity. Water is excellent. I have offered him every food I can imagine. He is quarantined. I have increased/decreased temps. Added salt. Done water changes. You name it.
I am looking for any sound advice from those that have similar experiences. I would really like to salvage this guy.
Thank you.
Click to expand...

you mention your water is perfect but you have medicated it multiple times????? obviously if the medication didnt work why keep trying it.and how can your water be perfect with meds.i bet you have over medicated this ray.what you see happining on the outside is probably a result of something wrong in the inside you cannot see and may have caused.

dont add anything but water and maybe a bit of carbon to a filter.the most sound advice would be to not do anything to it.keep water real top quality no meds no nothing.you will be lucky if it pulls through.... and just out of curiosity what types of meds did you use multiple times and experiment with?
 
I agree with the rest, leave water alone and offer live foods. You said he is in QT, how big is his QT tank and how big is he for that matter? Could be a matter of the parameters in the QT tank swinging up and down when you are not checking them.
 
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