Stingray issues, what can it be?

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Tor-Eriik

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Jan 3, 2010
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A few months back one of my big "yepezi" rays went away, she suddenly stopped eating, acting normal, just not as active as before, and suddenly went to the skys.. Few months later on, i got the same issue with another "yepezi", same routine. I was thinking it was weird, but maybe that species had a little defekt or something so i didnt think that much about it. But now im getting a little concerned, couse now one of my sp peru ray males has stopped eating.. The weird thing is that everyone else is acting as normal as it gets during this, nothing seems wrong with anything. I have 8 WC discus in there laying eggs all the time, 6 big altifrons having the time of their life, same goes with the 6 other rays(used to be 8 other rays) and some other fish.. Cant really wrap my head around this..

Setup is 1200 gallons, 1400 gallons totalt. Changing 160 gallons a day with autodrip(take out 100 of them and adding fresh new). PH 7, KH 2, GH 5, nitrite 0, ammonia 0, nitrate around 30.. Filter is a powerbead85 (manufactur says it should be enough for a 4000 gallon heavy stocked koi pond), and an eheim 2080.

I feel it is similiar to when Discus gets gillworms, one get bullied, the worms attack,stops eating and it dies a month later. And when that one dies, the worms take another weak individual, and in the end everyone is dead.. Weak individuals always go first.

The sp peru that has now stopped eating is acting all normal exept for the fact it doesnt eat. Normal breathing, nothing visiual to point finger at..

ANYONE?
 
Did you cut open the guts of the dead ones? It sounds a little like there is a parasite at work.
 
Sounds like a parasite. I would have a neocropsy done

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I think you are right on with the weaker one getting attacked by parasite but what is causing the stress? Is there a dominant ray in the tank that bullies the others (or trying to mate)? Maybe watch or video tape the tank with the lights low to see if there is an agressive fish. I lost a smaller female due to an agressive male. Stopped eating and never came back. Temp/PH change, filter need changed, over feeding, chemicals leeching into the water source (do you run incoming water through a carbon/sediment filter)...

Might quarentine the current ray in question and treat with Prazi.
 
I think there was a similar thread a ways back where someone had similar problems and they kept discus with their rays. The rays slowly died without any real signs of a problem. Could it be discus carry a parasite / bacteria that are passed onto rays (like an intermediate host)? They are native to the same waters.
 
I am thinking parasite myselfe. All my rays are wildcaughts, and has never bin threated with anything, they are 3 and 2 years old in my tanks, never seen any issues before now. The fishes i have are very carefully chocen to be calm and non agressive, so i dont see that as the problem. The fish in there are heroes, discus, satanoperca and altifrons. The male ray that is not eating now, has no damage at all. Offcourse there is stressfactors between the rays, i have a 3 females and 4 males, but it is really the females that get the beating, and 2 of the males(the once trying to mate them all the time). 2 of the females has had 3 litters each.. I have bin feeding more lately as the males seem a little agressive on the females, but again, it is a male that is not eating, no damage on him whatsoever.. I do run my drip through a carbon filter, may change that one since its almost a year since i put it up. But i dont really see that as the problem either, my discus(as we all know very finical fish), are breeding all the time in there. The carbon is also on all of my tanks, and no issues anywere, gues the pups in the puptank would be long gone by now if it was that. Filter is as said a Bedfilter, i backflush it every 2 weeks, so its pretty fresh all the time :)

I gues when it all comes down to it, its probably a parasite that has come to wake. Weird it doesnt hit the ladies in there, they must be the stressed once with all the mating going on. Temp and ph has always bin the same.28 degrees and ph 7.

I did not cut the dead once open, i didnt catch them by the houre, and we all know that a dead fish does NOT smell very well. Pretty puke to say the least. I will try to get a tank from a buddy of mine so that i can quarantine, i dont have an available tank at this moment.(Its like the 1200 gallon took all the space i had for many tanks :D )

Thank you all for your response, hope my answeres can give some ideas. Anyone who feels like they have an idea, chime in! Im not really used to sick fish, bin doing this for 20 years now, and never had anything but the "prick diseas" once.
 
Tor-Eriik said:
I am thinking parasite myself. All my rays are wildcaughts, and has never bin threated with anything,
Click to expand...

....pretty much all wilds carry some parasite or another.....so........

Now the problem will be to decide which parasite and how to treat it/them.
Have you access to a microscope and if so can you do a 'squash mount' of some feces to look ?
If not you probably you will need to do basically a full quarantine/debugging procedure, which can be extensive and take weeks , for example: metronidazole...rest a couple weeks...prazi....rest again....maybe panacur also.....not necessarily in that order.
 
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