How do you mature your filters?

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Candiru
MFK Member
Jan 12, 2010
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Sunderland, UK.
How do you guy's who have a ridiculous amount of stingrays know your filters can handle it?

I see people who have 10+ ray's in a tank, what type of filtration allows for this?

And finally when wanting to add a ray to your tank how do you know your filters can handle one?

If I do get a ray it will be going into a "new" tank, obviously it will be cycled I hear this is not the best way but I have really not much of an alternative, what can I do to help this apart from lots of water changes?

Sorry for the amount of questions!
 
If you have 10+ rays then you would build up to it and you would make sure that you would have large filters in place.

I always add some old filter media to a new tank or borrow a big fish.
 
Just Toby;4943902; said:
If you have 10+ rays then you would build up to it and you would make sure that you would have large filters in place.

I always add some old filter media to a new tank or borrow a big fish.
Click to expand...

So what your saying is if I want to add a ray I should add a large fish first to ensure the bio media is built up?
 
OR, you could do it the right way and have a lot of bio media and filtration to support such a large bioload. (a large sump) and slowly add the rays one by one, slowly building up the bacteria to properly cope with the large bioload.
 
Ammonia is easy to come by in America so it's easy to ramp up a filter to be able to handle a large bioload with a fishless cycle. You can cycle your tank before getting a ray by adding a bunch of fish food or taking a widdle in the water.. Basically anything that will get the ammonia reading to rise.

If you have a tank with 3 rays, adding one isn't going to bother the filter - the bacteria can quickly multiply to cover the extra load once they're supporting the current load.

Wet/dry trickle filters and bioreactors are popular choices for ray tanks, for obvious reasons. Large canisters are often used too, although personally I'm not a big fan of canister filters (their flow is pitifully low and they're a PITA to clean).

Beyond that, it's all about water changes and taking lots of reading until you know how your filters and water chemistry work with rays.

In case you think widdling in the water to cycle the filters is icky, think about what the rays will be doing..
 
I am one of those people with 10+ rays in a single tank. I have a large sump with alot of bio balls to handle the bio load. I started this tank out with 2 rays, used nitromax to quickly cycle it, and then over the course of about 5-6 months built the population up to 17, adding no more than 2 or 3 rays at a time and always using nitromax to give the bacteria a little boost.

Since I got it cycled I haven't had any ammonia issues with this tank, and with an aggressive water change schedule the nitrates stay under 20ppm easy. The key is having enough filtration to handle the bio load adding rays slowly to give your bacteria time to build up to handle the extra bio load.
 
Okay fellas thanks for the help understand the stocking ray's slowly however what about your first ray? How do you know your filter is ready for one? Its just adding the first ray I'm worried about!
 
tell me you have a test kit? not the test strips, but a master drop test kit...? what size tank do u have? water volume helps alot... and if your not cycled yet, then be prepared to do 25% water changes every few days, bc a ray will spike out your ammonia. and you need to keep the ammonia low or u will kill the ray
 
If you want to fish less cycle then you can buy ammonia at b and q and the internet is full of the way to do it.

Tetra make an additive that allows you to add fish on the same day of dosing and many people swear by it.

The cycle only takes about 2 weeks so either do the fish less cycle or add something hardy that will add some bioload first, I get your point, a ray produces a lot of load and is sensitive to ammonia so don't add it to a fresh tank.

The point about a good test kit is vital, if you test every day for the first few weeks and be prepared for water changes then you should be fine, if not then run a canister filter on a friends tank for a few weeks and then add that to your tank when you add the fish.
 
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