FW Stingray nitrate question

[Crazyfish88]

I'm just wondering what's the highest nitrate levels can stingrays tolerate? I was doing water changes every 3 days but my dad has really been hard on me for using so much water...So I cut it down to every 5 days. I test my nitrate levels every 4-5 days and its at 20ppm. Sounds low for my stock but I think the 1L of purigen is helping my nitrate levels stay low. I feed the rays everyday with 8-10 dew worms per day then I feed the other fish NLS pellets everyday and market shrimp/silversides/massivores twice a week. Could I get away with doing water changes once a week?

[Adz1]

i would not risk it myself.
but with the right mix of media you could maybe get away with once a week 50% water changes.....
though i do 50% every 3rd day on my 250g ray tank.

[Crazyfish88]

i would not risk it myself.
but with the right mix of media you could maybe get away with once a week 50% water changes.....
though i do 50% every 3rd day on my 250g ray tank.

Ya before I was doing 50% every 3 days on the 450 but my dad's flipping out for using so much water. Then add another 50 percent water change on my geo tank once a week so that's 500+ gallons of water I'm using per week just on my tanks...

[Cheon]

i do 50% once a week and i have lots of rays. do u run uv?

[charles]

I do 50% every 3 days but I don't have a big setup. I assume if your tank load and your media is large volumne enough, you can do once a week.

[Crazyfish88]

i do 50% once a week and i have lots of rays. do u run uv?

Yes I run a 55 watt UV

I do 50% every 3 days but I don't have a big setup. I assume if your tank load and your media is large volumne enough, you can do once a week.

Thanks Charles. Ya I've been doing 50% wc once a week now and the rays seem to do fine. I also tried starving them for 1 week but no luck with them eating other foods...I gave in and back to feeding dew worms again...I'll try again after 1 week of fattening them up.

[m_class2g]

Yes I run a 55 watt UV





Thanks Charles. Ya I've been doing 50% wc once a week now and the rays seem to do fine. I also tried starving them for 1 week but no luck with them eating other foods...I gave in and back to feeding dew worms again...I'll try again after 1 week of fattening them up.

yea takes a while for wc rays to get accustomed to frozen but once they are on it, they will eat like crazy!

try this. chop up the earthworms into 1 cm size. chop up prawn and marinade them together for 5 mins or so and dump it all in the tank. once they start taking prawn with worm goo all over it, u can slowly use less and less worm and eventually you can feed just prawn.

i got one wild caught black diamond that no matter what i did, would not eat frozen!!! i tried for well over 2 months and still nothing. one day, she decided to eat pellets that were intended for the clown loach lol. to this date, 4 months already, still no frozen!!! just pellets.

some wcs are just a lot more picky with switching over to frozen than others.

when i bought a wc 12 inch female marble from charles before, that one took 2 weeks.

[Crazyfish88]

yea takes a while for wc rays to get accustomed to frozen but once they are on it, they will eat like crazy!

try this. chop up the earthworms into 1 cm size. chop up prawn and marinade them together for 5 mins or so and dump it all in the tank. once they start taking prawn with worm goo all over it, u can slowly use less and less worm and eventually you can feed just prawn.

i got one wild caught black diamond that no matter what i did, would not eat frozen!!! i tried for well over 2 months and still nothing. one day, she decided to eat pellets that were intended for the clown loach lol. to this date, 4 months already, still no frozen!!! just pellets.

some wcs are just a lot more picky with switching over to frozen than others.

when i bought a wc 12 inch female marble from charles before, that one took 2 weeks.

Thanks for the tips Mike. I'll give it a try.

[skrick]

I do once a week water changes and have ,3 marbles ,2 gar,black arowana ,some discus and big tig cat in a 180g. I'm feeding prawn and smelt everyday but I change my water once a week. The bio in my 2 FX5 canisters is great so if you have enough bio built up once a week is fine and my levels are doing great and everything is thriving I also have UV going

[Crazyfish88]

I do once a week water changes and have ,3 marbles ,2 gar,black arowana ,some discus and big tig cat in a 180g. I'm feeding prawn and smelt everyday but I change my water once a week. The bio in my 2 FX5 canisters is great so if you have enough bio built up once a week is fine and my levels are doing great and everything is thriving I also have UV going

Thanks for the advice. Ya my bio media is more then enough. I haven't seen a ammo/nitrite spike since beginning of cycling the tank. Since then it has been 0/0. I also run 1L of purigen which is helping out with reducing my nitrates. I might add some pond matrix to my sump in the near future but I don't think it's neccessary but I like to have overkill filtration just in case. As of tests my nitrates reach about 30ppm by end of week before wc. When I do a 50% wc it drops to 10ppm but I don't feed meaty foods everyday like you do. I feed hikari aro sticks/massivores/nls pellets everyday, 10 x dew worms everyday for the rays (5 each per ray) and market shrimp/silversides/bloodworms twice a week as a treat.