Stingrays are very sensitive to changing water parameters and also produce tons of nitrates compared to other species. By changing so much water at a time and as often as you are, you are eliminating the nitrates but allowing your ammonia and nitrite to mini cycle and spike. As well as not leaving enough cycled water to buffer your water parameters .
SOS RAYS, please help
- Thread starter JohnTr
- Start date
Less is more, if you can do 10-25% daily your fish would love you but that's not realistic without a drip. When I manually changed water it was 50% every other week and 25% on the off weeks. As stated, removing a lot of water will cause small cycles by killing beneficial bio. Plus it's harder to stabilize parameters. If you have sick fish don't shock em by changing a lot of water it makes it worse, you just bump up frequency.
Trusting a test kit like that is definitely going to cause trouble. You never go above 70% unless you know for sure you water is clean like from reverse osmosis. And did I see your heater in the tank in one of the pictures.
This depends on your tank size I feel. I do 70-90% water changes in tanks all the time since my tanks are small going from 180-300. And if they are bare bottom. When I get into much bigger tanks I feel that 50% 2x a week is better
80% water change at one time???? DANG! That is Dangerous! You better hope and pray that your water treatment plant dont put alot of chemicals threw the lines the day you do your change!
30% water changes weekly is my rule of thumb and i prefer a uv sterilizer to run on my ray systems.
Sorry to hear about your lose!! Sucky!!! Hopefully you can figure out a better hasbandy plan that is safer for the rest of those cool rays!
30% water changes weekly is my rule of thumb and i prefer a uv sterilizer to run on my ray systems.
Sorry to hear about your lose!! Sucky!!! Hopefully you can figure out a better hasbandy plan that is safer for the rest of those cool rays!
Being doing this for at least 2 months now with my 2 rays and both are healthy and eating. I obviously add Prime to my water. Discus owners do 90% daily. So massive water changes are 50% at most. Got it.
Discus generally don't have as massive of a bioload that can cause ammonia and nitrite buildup within a 24 hour period. So 90% a day won't cause mini cycles as quickly. Just my 2 cents. Feel free to correct me..
I would just be concerned about if the water treatment plant ever hiked up the chemicals in the waterlines the day you do such a massive water change. I just dont want to see you lose your rays.
You guys do realize that nitrifying bacteria is not present with any significance in the water right? 80% is fine as long as pH, salinity, hardness doesn't drastically change. As long as your biomedia is still intact you are fine.
Yeah, I was about to say as long as my bio rings are still in the same aquarium water and wasn't rinse with new tap water. And prime was added prior to touching my bio rings. Not to mention tank is barebottom, so there wasn't much bacteria in the actual tank itself
