# Water testing for sting rays



## Tdeon (Mar 4, 2013)

I am preparing for my new sting rays. I am hoping in 6 weeks that I will be able to place them in tank.... but could be longer if I don't get this right in testing water and making sure its right ... About me I am a first Time owner of soon to be Sting rays


I have been reading up on Sting rays and trying to understand water testing in Fresh water fish. So I am doing a test once a week to get the hang on how it works. Here is my question

For sting rays I am understanding

pH should be between 6.0 - 7.5

Temperature should be 68 -84F/20-29C

Hardness should be less then 5H

Carbon Hardness --- I am not understanding too well even after reading so much from net I not sure where it should be..

I am getting a hang on NO2 and N03 as per understanding

I am practicing with API test Strips but I have also bought the water testing one but will start using it in a month ...so I thought I would practice testing my water with strips... I am aware its not 100% right.

This question was probably asked 100 of times.. But sorry.... I am still new to this site and learning how to track things down in here.

As per Sting rays and breeding what should all my readings be for My tank or what do you keep your levels at for maintaining sting rays what are my boundaries ????

My set up has been now one week I did a test and plan on doing it weekly one to learn and watch and second to correct.

my results since set up a week ago test strips came out

GH - general Hardness came out 180 in the dark purple
KH Carb hardness was 180 Dark lighter Green
PH was 8.0
NO2 and NO3 were 0

I wanna practice to make sure I am doing this right As per me I never went in dept on water testing before or even trying to understand it so I am reading everything I find..LOL Problem is not every article is the same. they say something different or off by 10... Even for sting rays articles on what water should be... I not finding the answer I need
. so I dont know 100 % my boundaries on the above GH,KH,PH,NO2,N03 water should be at for sting rays

when testing your tank what do you keep it at ??? Love advise

also I am told I can throw fishes in to start cycle... some people are saying feeder fish such as gold fish to get my cycle going in tank. But I am reading they are not good what can I use to start my cycle in water.

Thanks everyone for info


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I have to ask, do you have any experience keeping fish ? Because rays are not a good fish for a beginner. They are delicate, do not tolerate any mistakes in water quality in terms of nitrites or ammonia levels. What another fish would survive for days might kill a ray very quickly. Some species can be very hard to feed, and if you buy wild caught fish that have not been feeding well already, you may not be able to get them feeding well enough to prevent them starving to death.

They may well eat any tank mate and may eat each other. They are members of the shark family and are very much predators. They also cannot be treated with the usual medications if they are wounded or become sick. They're very difficult to heal if they do become ill or wounded. They need a very wide, long tank, at least 24 inches wide, four feet long minimum for the smallest ones. They probably should have water on the acidic side, but some articles say they can handle more alkaline conditions. They don't do so well with planted tanks.. which means you won't be able to use plants to help keep nitrate levels down.

They're venomous, so must be handled with great care and best not to put your hand in the tank until they are well used to you. So you should have external filters, and they need clean, clean, clean water.. so you need at least two BIG filters and careful water monitering. You will be doing a lot of big water changes to maintain the water quality needed, which can be a lot of work, and they are not so cheap to feed either, assuming they survive.

So are you sure you are up to the needs of keeping such difficult fish ? I have to ask.. I do not mean to be unkind, but the questions you ask about water chemistry and cycling make me think you are new to fish keeping. If so, you would do far better to begin with easier, less costly fish first. Learn how to keep aquariums, how to manage the water parameters, keep filters clean, etc., before you advance to keeping rays. Sadly, if you make any of many beginner mistakes that we read about here every week, your rays might not live very long at all and that's a huge loss, not only in terms of money, but your time, effort and emotionally as well.

But to try and answer your questions -

If your tap water is pH 8, that is relatively high for fish. Also called alkaline. Typically, once a tank has matured, the pH will be lower, but it can take several months for this to happen. The usual alternative to high pH or hard tap water is to use Reverse Osmosis [RO] filtered water in its place. You can install a RO system in your home, or buy it in big bottles from WalMart or fish stores or other places instead, which means lugging them home regularly.

RO water has had all the minerals removed by the filter. So if you use RO water, you must buy products to add minerals back into the water, to achieve what you need in terms of hardness. You'll have seen hardness referred to as GH, or general hardness, and KH, or carbonate hardness. Hardness is a complex subject, and I cannot explain it entirely. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all the subtleties of the chemistry myself, but I'll try to give you the very basics.

General hardness refers to all the dissolved minerals and salts in water, while KH refers to carbonate, or calcium content. Cichlids are one group of fish that typically need high KH and GH, and often use high calcium content substrates like crushed corals to help keep the calcium levels up. If I understand it correctly, higher KH levels make it easier to keep the pH stable.. this is called the buffering capacity of the water. Water with low or no KH can make a stable pH impossible to maintain. So RO water has to have minerals added or the pH won't be stable.

But minerals are important for other reasons. One is that fish regulate the salt and water content of their bodies using osmosis, which is defined as "the tendency of molecules of a solvent to pass through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated solution". So from a side with less dissolved salts in it to a side with more dissolved salts in it. A solvent is anything that will dissolve something else.. and water is called the universal solvent, because so many things will dissolve in it.

So fish have to maintain an internal body pressure to survive, which is called osmotic pressure. They do it by managing the passage of water and salts through the membranes of their bodies . Without the right amounts of the right minerals in their water, osmotic pressure may be badly affected, which can cause death. So if you use RO water, be sure you remineralize it to the hardness your rays need.

Trying to make tap water a lot softer or lower the pH substantially from the way it comes out of the tap is quite difficult. You can mix tap water with RO water, to try and get the right result. Or you can use black water extract, driftwood or peat moss to help soften and acidify water, but there are limits to what they can do, and wood especially, takes time to have an effect.

Water tests are the only way to know what's going on with your tank water. Many consider the dip strips to be less accurate than the ones that use drops in a vial, so that's a choice you have to make. I use strips for quick readings and if anything looks the least bit off, I use the vials to get a more accurate reading. You are always comparing to a colour scale, so do the comparisons in good light. Ideally, daylight, or under 6500 K bulbs, and always in the same light if possible.

One thing to know is that the pH scale is logarithmic, starting at 1 up to 14. Each reading is 10x higher or lower than the one immediately above or below it. So when you read that sting rays need a pH of between 6 to 7.5, that is really quite a large variance, because pH 7 is 100 times higher than pH 6. The main thing you must achieve is to keep the pH stable, or at the same level, all the time. Stable readings at a somewhat less than ideal pH are much easier for fish to tolerate than constant changes in an attempt to get to a specific pH number. Using chemicals to change pH can be very frustrating and result in these constant changes.

Water hardness is difficult to understand and I don't completely understand it, but in very simple terms, water is either hard, which means it contains a lot of dissolved minerals, or soft, having a much lower dissolved mineral content. Hardness and pH are related, because hardness can affect what pH level can be achieved, but they are not the same. Some fish must have soft water, which typically has a lower, acidic pH reading. Some need harder water, usually having a higher, or alkaline pH.

Most fish can adapt to a fair range in between what are said to be ideal parameters. You will always find opinions that differ on what is ideal for a specific fish, but if you research enough, with luck you find a middle ground. But the main thing is to keep them stable, whatever the parameters are.

As for starting a cycle, the best and fastest way is to cycle a new tank is to use mature media from a filter on another tank that is cycled. Please read the fishless cycling sticky here on the forums, it will explain a lot. Essentially, cycling is the process that turns the ammonia from fish waste or other things like leftover food, into less toxic compounds. It is accomplished by having two kinds of bacteria in the filter media. One turns the ammonia into something slightly less toxic, which is nitrite. But nitrite is still very toxic. Then another bacteria turns the nitrite into nitrate. Much less toxic, but it still has to be controlled. Nitrate is food for plants, so in planted tanks, plants help use it up. Ideally, keep it at around 20 ppm or less. Anything over 50 ppm is going to be a problem for the fish.

If you can get used media from an established tank, it will have colonies of the right bacteria on it. But bear in mind, those bacteria need food to survive, which means waste in the water. So if you don't have fish to put in right away, I'd advise adding a few snails instead. They will provide enough waste to keep the bacteria alive until you can add fish.

Plants also add bacteria, if you keep fish that are ok with plants. I don't keep rays, but from what I've read, a planted tank and rays do not mix too well, unfortunately.

If you cannot get used media, the next best way is to use pure ammonia. Home Hardware stores sell a brand called Old Country, which is the only one I've heard of that is pure. It must be pure ammonia, without any soaps or other added ingredients. You add some to the tank of water every day until you get the right reading and then wait for the bacteria to grow, which can take weeks. See that sticky on fishless cycling.

You test the water daily to make sure the ammonia levels are maintained until you begin to see a nitrite reading that goes up. This is called a nitrite spike. Once your nitrites spike, you will eventually see a nitrate reading start as well. This is good, and the nitrites should begin to come down once the nitrate reading appears.

The goal is a reading of 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and nitrates around 20 ppm. Once your tests show these results, your tank is cycled and ready to have fish added. Keep testing for awhile afterward, because your bacteria need some time to adjust to higher loads of waste from additional fish.. so don't add them all the same day. Good luck.. and consider fish that are easier than rays to start with.

Just read, there's lots of info for newbie ray keepers. See Monster FishKeepers forum. There is a post in the General Freshwater forum with a bit of ray info too.


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