about to become a ray owner

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mynheers_a_pint

Candiru
MFK Member
May 4, 2008
676
3
48
United Kingdom
Hi all. Apologies for the first post scenario but i have been a lurker for a little while, gathering info to help decide my direction.

As you may have guessed by the location of my first post, i am about to venture into ray ownership. In the UK it is very unusual to find these forsale so when these reticulated rays came up i had to do a lot of research to decide that i am able to care for them. Having bought my tank and seting it up over the weekend i am currently carrying out the nitogen cycle in the tank and am trying to get everything absolutely perfect.

so tom my current issue; i live in a very hard water area and having comared the water conditions in the LFS tank i have found that my water is considerably harder- LFS has 6.8 compared to my 7.8. I reallise that i do not want to add chemicals for obvious reasons so what natural methods can be implamented to lower the PH? I also have plants and a carbon canister. Can these be causing an issue?

in addition to the above, i have been considering getting a reverse osmosis kit fitted to our plumbing. While i am certain it would be beneficial, is it worthwhile or am i going over the top? If i went for RO water is it worth doing a 50% RO/tap water change? I m currently using pure tap for the cycle so i would be looking doing a water change after a week or so but should i go for RO or can i use treated tap? Also in regards to the water change issues; i know they need to be frequent but do i need to pre warm the water if the fish is present? Should i treat the water with tap safe or the like, before i put it in the tank if iam using standard tap?

As you may be able to guess i am trying to get everything abslutely perfect before i bring the ray home.

Cheers.
 
poo. I can't seem to edit.

Ok, i also meant to ask regarding the ray ammonia production; is it worth installing a second external filter? I have a fairly high capacity external filter but i also have a spare fluval external filter spare and am trying to decided if it's worth adding it to the tank.
 
csx4236;2144239; said:
Your PH is fine leave it alone, and RO water is not needed. Yes you will need to treat your tap water and just use warm water from tap no?
Click to expand...

I was working with the idea i would have to buy in RO from my local LFS so it may require heating in some form. But if it's not needed that means hot tap is the obvious solution. :)
 
mynheers_a_pint;2144241; said:
poo. I can't seem to edit.

Ok, i also meant to ask regarding the ray ammonia production; is it worth installing a second external filter? I have a fairly high capacity external filter but i also have a spare fluval external filter spare and am trying to decided if it's worth adding it to the tank.
Click to expand...


You can never have enough filtration add it, and what size tank is this?
 
dimenions are 48"X18"X24" 75 UK gal. I want, and will most likley get, a larger tank but this is for a single juvenile ray.

As you are probably guessing, i am so worried about getting it wrong so i want to get everything perfect. I know that juvenile reticulated rays are very hard to keep due to their sensitivity which is jsut another reason to get it right.
 
thats a pretty small tank, but it should be fine for a while but you will need to upgrade quick
 
As Mike said, RO is a no-go. RO water has no buffering capacity, and is subsequently less stable than tap water. He's also right in saying that you can't have too much filtration.

As far as your tank size goes, it will be fine for a short period of time, but even a 60 x 30 x 30 tank won't house most rays for life. You're looking at something in more of the 84 x 48 x 36 range.
 
If they are retics that you are getting then a 30" wide should be fine for a very long time maybe even for life. Just make sure you have the filtration to substain the bio load.
 
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