Stingray keeping in the UK

[Cool Mart]

Cheaper rays such as what are often sold as "tea cups" (retics, laticeps) and motoro's will outgrow any 6x2x2 setup dispite what some people will tell you. Big external filters are fine, thats what I use. Eheim better than fluval in my opinion. Look at a 2080 or the bigger 2260 at the very minimum, I run both on my 6 foot setup.

Regards to where to buy them, make sure you have setup sorted first and filter matured (cycled). Rays really arent hard if you have basic knowledge of fish keeping. Discus and marines are much harder.

Stay away from St Albums Maidenhead, their rays are very poor health as they barely feed them. Complained to them few weeks ago but they didnt even care. Heard they recently lost whole system of fish anyway inc their breeding leo's and all other rays. Hillingdon Maidenhead would be good bet and more local to you, the manager Luke in user on here and knows his stuff.

Hope this helps but please do more research on web before buying any ray.

Maidenhead got a batch of cheap Discus in but didn't quarantine them, instead they put them straight into the softwater system shared with the main display tank and all the other Discus tanks.
They lost three Leopoldi (one male & two female) and a Tiger Ray along with all of thier Discus.
Sad, very sad .. I don't think there's many breeding pairs in the UK right now !

Martin

 

[jakethesnake]

what type of rays do you keep Jake , and is it a ray only tank , you have already dispelled a few worries i've had about keeping rays , i've had reef systems running for years now but had always considered rays to be too delicate ,so thanks for the advise Steve

Cool, reef systems will be alot harder than rays to keep. Just remember rays have huge bio load so therefore big filtration is must. Maybe go for sump as your experienced in reef setups.

I have a pair of black diamond x classic leos, recently sold lovely pair of henlei (one in pic) for these new one. Kept with many other fish like cichlids, arowana and catfish.

Black rays (leos, henlei and P14) tend to be much hardier than brown rays. It would take alot more than bad water to kill mine.

Heres pics of my tank a few months ago

 

[pigfish]

thanks for the photos Jake truly awesome tankfull, i,ve had a phone around the other day and there does seem to be a lack of rays in the country at the moment especially leos . Steve

 

[jakethesnake]

You just gotta know who to speak too ;-) wont find many in shops