Weight Gaining Issues

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Jesseliu13

Jesseliu13

Polypterus
MFK Member
Jun 27, 2012
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Holmdel, NJ
I recently had an issue with columnaris in my tank and have treated it and hopefully have solved the problem. But when i nuked my tank with nitrofuran 2 of my rays stopped eating. 1 of them got extremely skinny. It is eating now but i am having an issue with weight gain. I feed shrimp, swai, tilapia(atleast i try to. they dont like it), and smelt. I just ordered about 300 canadian night crawlers online but wont come in till next week. Are there foods that are specifically good for weight gain?
 
Jesseliu13 said:
I recently had an issue with columnaris in my tank and have treated it and hopefully have solved the problem. But when i nuked my tank with nitrofuran 2 of my rays stopped eating. 1 of them got extremely skinny. It is eating now but i am having an issue with weight gain. I feed shrimp, swai, tilapia(atleast i try to. they dont like it), and smelt. I just ordered about 300 canadian night crawlers online but wont come in till next week. Are there foods that are specifically good for weight gain?
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Sorry to hear about your situation. I would see more protein in the shrimp and tilapia. What kind of ray is it? All I know is a ray that won't eat there is something wrong. Since they're eating again thats a great sign. Just go to Walmart and buy some canadian night crawlers for the time being and let them enjoy that.

My rays will eat tilapia as a staple with shrimp. I tried pellets at first they did eat it but now don't like it. I think one of them does eat shrimp pellets though.
 
I found worms to be the easiest thing to bulk with. They are easy to get down and they don't have to chew them up at all. I just dig them up out of my backyard, but this obviously becomes more difficult the bigger the ray. What happened to the worm farm you had going? Not willing to hurt the population yet?
 
I have the worm farm going but population is still small. I see no eggs yet. I might be doing something wrong. They do seem to be doing well though. Also the worms in my work farm are extremely small. I added larger worms to the farm but no substantial growth in population. As for the Rays they are my marbles Motoros.... One of them is so skinny that they have veins showing. He's eating but no weight gain showing...
 
Sounds like IP or he's not eating as much as you'd expect. They can be very interested and even aggressive but still not consume food quickly, then the other rays mop up what they are eating and come to say hello. That's why worms were far more effective at bulking skinny rays ime, because it's very little work for them to get it down without any ripping or tearing and the worms are pretty easy to target feed. With the rain we've had digging up worms shouldn't be too difficult.
 
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im actually afraid of digging worms from my backyard. I am afraid its unsafe... i ordered a bunch of worms just for feeding. says coming wednesday. But i will go to walmart buy a couple containers of worms for the time being. its almost 60 cents per worm from walmart. its like 18 cents online in bulk.
 
i dont think it is internal parasites as he was doing fine before. and i did treat the tank with prazi pro before... unless tilapia or the swai has internal parasites in them.
 
AFAIK prazi doesn't treat all parasites but I'm not sure what other treatment to suggest.
 
Worms and pellets, fastest way to put weight on a ray. If your rays won't eat pellets, you can stuff pellets into worms and feed them those. You should see results in a couple weeks if you power feed. By power feed I mean feed them 2-3 times a day until they refuse food. Make sure your biologoal filtration can handle all the waste though...
 
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