It was a newborn pup. I usually wake up when I hear any commotion from the tank at night from the babies being born and seperate the babies right away. Well this was the 4th litter in 5 nights and all my rays seem to like giving birth around 1-3 am. I was extremely tired and ended up sleeping through the whole thing. When I finally woke up it was too late for this little fella. I can't really seperate my rays to easy right now due to lack of space.
Expensive food
- Thread starter skynoch
- Start date
Sorry to hear about your mishap Skynoch,heard of males commiting this crime but never a female!If you were keeping the rays on a glass bottom where they would be more vunerabl(exposed) i would have suggested adding substrate so they could at least burry themselves till such a time when you could rescue them....obviously this is "not" the case,my Marbles are on exactly the same substrate as yours Mmmmm!...its a real puzzler....was the pup an only one this time ?
Getting rid of such a ray isnt an option,thats arguably the best "female" Marble ive seen on this forum,and i dont say that lightly,theres some real quality of late.
Getting rid of such a ray isnt an option,thats arguably the best "female" Marble ive seen on this forum,and i dont say that lightly,theres some real quality of late.
There were 6 pups born in this litter with bite marks on 3 of them and then the one dead one. I've also heard more about the males killing pups vs the females. I was wondering if it was more a species thing since I've seen my male marble do this once also, the only difference is I wasn't sure if the pup wasn't born dead and not fully developed due to how bad it was mauled.aquaman45;3716029; said:
That could be possible that it was a stillborn. It was fully developed but judging from the bitemarks on the others I'm thinking that she may have played with them first.
skynoch;3716861; said:
Do you know i reckon you could be right,the pup was possibly born dead,the others got in the way and she bit them by mistake.My Marbles mostly ignore the new borns,having said that when i partitioned the tank the first time the female never left their side for a couple of weeks,the male showed no interest....possibly a kind of parental care on the females part???
We are all learning all of the time about our rays in captivity.
5 pups survived then,not too disappointed i would have thought.....congratulations!
Nope not to disappointed at all. Thanks.aquaman45;3716903; said:
The one thing I did notice which I found strange was after awhle I came back to retrieve the dead pup and the mom was sitting by it partially covering it for at least 20 minutes until I removed it. Maybe they do provide more parental care than thought.
