Help. Bruised FW Ray... reading           5/28/10 I recently purchased a Motoro stingray. Had ghost shrimps Monday and Tuesday blood worms wed Thurs'¦ This am I noticed it had a spot this afternoon I noticed it had another one in its body'¦ Everything is in range ph temp and water is new Tried your search engine but cant find anything similar Ty <Hello Ty. Can't help without more information. Yes, this looks like physical damage, and yes, this could very quickly kill your Stingray should the infection spread. So let's be sure you have the right environment for your Stingray, namely: an aquarium measuring well over 200 gallons, a filter operating with a turnover not less than 8 times the volume of the tank per hour, zero ammonia and nitrite levels, nitrate below 20 mg/l, and water chemistry that is extremely stable. One last item you MUST have is Richard Ross' book on keeping pet stingrays; if you haven't spent the ten dollars on that, then everything else you're spending money on is a total waste. I cannot stress too strongly how crucial that book is to successful stingray keeping, given how 90% of the stingrays sold get killed by their owners within a few months of purchase. Cheers, Neale.>

Re: Help 5/28/2010 Awesome advice! Will get with the pet shop today Crossing my fingers on this one Thanks Neale <Glad to have helped. Good luck! Neale.>

Freshwater stingray disease/injury Dear Sirs I have 6 Motoro stingrays in my home aquarium (I am currently keeping 6 tanks at home). 2 of my stingrays have developed some scratches in the edge of the disk. I have another 2 whose edges have become whitish (the skin around the edges of the disk). <Usually evidence of falling/inappropriate water quality or mechanical injury. Do you have "sharp" gravel or rocks in their tank?> For both cases I have tried adding salt to the water, rising the temperature (from 26 centigrade to 30 centigrade), y also used CHLORAMPHENICOL, MALACHITE GREEN, FUROXONE, etc. but nothing seems to work. They don't get worse; but they don't get well either. <What tests for water quality do you have? I would check pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate for sure. Also, I don't encourage salt additions to these fishes water... not much in the Amazon period> Please let me know which would be the way to cure my stingrays. Or if they will have to live with this problem for the rest of their lives... <Not a good idea to ignore this warning sign. Check your water quality for metabolites... is the water soft, acidic? Have you read the materials posted on WWM re FW stingrays? Please see here: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/fwstingrays.htm and the linked FAQs (above, in blue) re this family> Your kind assistance will be highly appreciated Best rgds, Carlos <Be chatting, Bob Fenner>