Parasites in Rays

[keepinfish]

I have had my pair of motoros for about 6 months now and after reading Miles sticky on Stingrays, I am wondering if maybe I have parasites. I feed mainly shrimp with shell (no tail) and earthworms and occasional cut fish or mussels. My rays poop is white and curly or stringy, some of there poop is kinda like a peach color.
I had always assumed that it was from eating lots of shrimp and worms.

I do not have any problems with them, they are very active, eat a lot, and don't look skinny.

Opinions???

 

[keepinfish]

That is what I thought too, but what would parasites do, shorten the life of my rays? Or would there be other symptoms? Obviously if they do have parasites they are still pretty healthy they are growing fairly rapidly and always are eating.

 

[Brent]

there poop is white from the shrimp i have never had issues with internal parasites
maybe i am just lucky i know at least my henlei was treated for parasites before i got him from dw as a precaution

 

[Nic]

if it ain't broke don;t fix it

i agree you could run a treatment of prazi pro thats your call though

 

[keepinfish]

Yea but i hate to treat if there is a chance there is nothing wrong.

 

[vamptrev]

rays are fairly sensitive, when i had parasite problems i knew right away because my rays stopped eating and behaving normally.

 

[Miles]

Im curious to know if you give rays an optimum environment, that they can overcome the parasites on their own. They acquire the parasites from being a bottom dweller in the wild, so they must have resistances to nematodes.

Like DW said, if they are growing and putting on weight, don't worry.. When I feed my rays alot of krill, it turns a pink/peach.. But before I treated with PraziPro, my smallest retic would produce long white stringy poops on any type of food.. After treatment, the feces started to look much more solid and distinct. After that, it started accepting krill more readily and putting on weight and color more rapidly.

 

[keepinfish]

I am sure that I am fine then. My rays eat a lot and have grown pretty fast!