The beginning of the end? Raykeepers nightmare.

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
DB, I don't have nearly the experience as the more experienced ray keepers such as you on here @ 3 years or so, and have only had one occasion of something like this. Both marbles stopped eating out of the blue for 7 days. I even PM'd you about it. Really the only thing I did was two water changes and waited to see what happened. They turned around in about 8 days and started eating. To this day I don't know why. Params were all within normal range.
As for as the filtration, I run a 145 gallon sump which has never been cleaned in a year. I have 2x 100 micron socks on the out flows to the sump and is returned with a mag 24. I also run two FX5s and only clean them 2-3 times a year. Stock includes 6 rays one VATF and the Fahaka in the sump. I also keep water well agitated with 2x 1200 gph water circulators. I am a more of an old school style ray keeper. Not up on all the newer setups.:( My point here is I also agree that you have ample filtration.
Also as for as Dents. I had a conversation with a importer from another board (whom a lot of members on MFK don't care for) about this on an occasion, he is a firm believer that the head dents are stress related and not from lack of food. Whether this is accurate or not I don't know, I am just passing this on.

And no need for apologies. Some outburst were deserved. Hoping for the best.
 
To me it sounds like the two new ones where exposed to some parasite or bacteria and brought it in with them. The one that survived was probably the healthier of the two and has since built up an immunity to it, your two marbles immune systems, having never been exposed to whatever it is, where unable to handle it. The stress from the male nipping at them might have contributed to weakening there immune system. Nothing scientific there, just sounds allot like chicken pox going around a school to me.

I have only seen the forehead dents develop in rays that refused to eat or didn't eat enough over the long term, I have never seen an otherwise healthy ray develop one in a matter of days. I would definitely suspect a parasite in your case.
 
JohnG said:
To me it sounds like the two new ones where exposed to some parasite or bacteria and brought it in with them. The one that survived was probably the healthier of the two and has since built up an immunity to it, your two marbles immune systems, having never been exposed to whatever it is, where unable to handle it. The stress from the male nipping at them might have contributed to weakening there immune system. Nothing scientific there, just sounds allot like chicken pox going around a school to me.

I have only seen the forehead dents develop in rays that refused to eat or didn't eat enough over the long term, I have never seen an otherwise healthy ray develop one in a matter of days. I would definitely suspect a parasite in your case.
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Al,i agree with John here.I hope things improve quickly,if you need to call me im around,always glad to help .
 
I didn't even notice the dent on my lil male till I looked for it. First glance was always at his hump as he was a lil piggy, and was still plump when he died, with a dent in his head. Now my light based female has this dent.

This is the same forehead dent I saw in Zero, the last long term captive I lost. He sported his for a couple months but seemed to come on much slower.

Possible for something to live longterm with the rays and only pop up and infect the weak?

A super virus unaffected by the regular arsenal of meds? I believed it the first time I had heard of it back when I was fighting fungus with rediculous amounts of salt, binox, and really warm water. Wonder if it would be possible for the same thing to stick around this long?

Black worms are ordered. Maybe I can just nurse her back to health and hope that she never gets stressed again.

What is everyone using for UVs?

I'll be on standby for any stingray steaming stanleys floatin round in there. :naughty: I'll have to see if I can find a source for the scope and the ability to ID any unwanted intruders in said poo.

Anyone here successfully ID'd anything in thier ray poo?
 
JUNE2011 013.JPG

db junkie here is a photo of a bd that i cutt opened and examined.

this ray came in and ate for a week.it than all of the sudden stoped? why i dont know more than likely my water was a bit off. i will try and make a long story short
it to had a very big dent in the head.i tried a pristine water treatment for some time just to let him calm down and recover.it never started to eat so i decided to medicate for internal parasites,but i had no real evidence or proof i aimlessley medicated - that was the first thing i did wrong. the ray began to swim upside down and we were finding it even laying upside down 10 times a day sometimes .we would flip him over everytime to help him out.after i removed the prazi it stoped this behavior and that lasted for about two weeks
this ray lingered around my home for 4 months without eating at about month 2 i tried kanaplex.aimlessly again because i thought maybe it had a bacterial infection that was causing this. no results didnt help at all.ray was paper thin at this point. i tried prazi again and the ray didnt react to it so well so i stoped treatment.

after all this 3 aimless treatments i did their was no improvements but the ray still lingered.i kept the water real good for the remainder of its life.one morning it finally died "thank god" i was sad and relieved at the same time "i am not going to get all mushy on you db"

after it passed i really wanted to know if their was a hook inside and their was not.but i am a very avid fisherman and i know the insides of fish quite well.i did notice green puss looking infectious mass all over the liver .look close up in this picture you can see it.


NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK CAUSED THE RAYS LIVER TO BE INFECTED

this ray was dying and all i did was kill it quicker with the meds.i learned soooooooo much from this ray.i talked to a very respected ray expert and he told me the infectious mass was due to over medicating and i never over medicated i did what the bottle or package said.


right now i have a tiger ray having a hard time,i have no idea why its not eating,do you honestly think if i start aimlessly medicating it it will get better "cause thats what you are doing" and i do notice its thinning out its only a matter of time till it too gets the dent. i am not going to do anything except turn the lights off cover the tank so its dark ,seperate with a divider so its alone and keep water pristine.

this is only my approach theirs many ways to fix things in this world i myself and almost everybody else have not had sucess medicating rays.in most cases i could almost bet the ones that did have sucess would have come around without meds anyways.

and this is what i have to contribute bd junklie.... cold hard facts and eveidence of what meds do to rays. but i already know you dont care.so medicate your dying rays and finish them off quicker with only assuming not ever finding things out for your self!

JUNE2011 013.JPG
 
db junklie .....its also very hard to examine ray poop with microscope,i have thought soooooo many times my rays had parasites cause they stoped eating and never once after spending soo many hard hours looking through a scope did i find anything.i am also not an expert so i dont really know what to look for. but a worm or something of that matter would be pretty evident
 
I am NOT going to side with you on your "no meds" belief. I will continue to "kill my rays with meds" and I will continue to take my blood pressure medication as perscribed to me by a profesional.

You sit here and say you've been keeping rays since 2002. Yet I was still trying to help you justify buying real bio media over lava rock. Given the amount of money you have in rays and the approach you took on filtration leads me to believe your priorities could use an adjustment.

Not sure what point you're trying to drive home here but it's really not helping at all.
 
Al , i run that 18watt Ocean CLear UV on my flowerhorn system taht is 300 gals and it works great.

I gaurantee that prazi did nothing to that BD in previuos post,the problems with that ray were from being caught or from the shipping.I have had rays arrive and stressed beyond belief and never develope a dent a ray that is eating great but stiill shows a dent more than likely has internal parasites.

More than likely the discus brought soemthing into your tanks,and the rays that you got from florida were stressed too and alowed something to spred more rapidly than you would have thought.Gettign a UV will aid in halting or slowing down a spred of any kind of infection.
 
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