FW Florida Stingrays

[the_deeb]

Cool, thanks for the info. I wonder if the fact that they were captured in SW explains the high morbidity of these rays in FW. I'd be curious to know if anyone has experience with housing a ray that was actually acquired from the St. John's river where the populations have had a chance to adapt to FW conditions over generations.

Also, the blood urea levels that I mentioned in my long post above are based on measurements from lab research studies. I can provide links if people are interested. However, as far as I'm aware, those studies only measured blood urea under different salinity conditions and didn't measure ammonia/nitrite/nitrate in the tank water, especially not in direct comparison with a potamotrygon. Also, I haven't come across any research studies that done comparative tests of nitrate sensitivity.

 

[tampa_bass]

fishy business in longwood,FL sells them for 60.00 every season. I asked him about these same questions and he claims to have customers who bought them 2 and 3 years ago and they are doing just fine..

 

[rooto56]

actually i know for a fact they do fine in FW, i mean why would adult rays go in to fresh water to give birth, if not for a good reason.
the reason that they do this is that FW is a safer habitat for the pups and the pups go back in to saltwater once they are a reasonable size (say 10 inch)
to breed
what i do know is that the growth of dasyatis sabina is stunted if kept in FW for long periods of time and as any hobbyist knows is that stunted fish are more
susceptible to disease and ammonia poisoning, and that is why people who keep them in freshwater have bad experiences,
and recommend them to be kept in salt, so its ok for them to be kept in freshwater for awhile,
but you should switch to salt as they get older if you want to prolong the life of the fish.

and as to them being caught in saltwater,
the reason behind the high mortality rate is that the rays have either already migrated back in the ocean
or they never entered freshwater at all, i forgot to mention this earlier as not all florida rays are born in FW