Interesting article on stingray diet

[skynoch]

Thought this was a good read that some people may enjoy. Lots of good info in this article about stingrays diets and eating habits.

http://72.14.213.132/translate_c?hl=en&amp...SfE5DC70-4R9i7A

[RD.]

Very interesting read, thanks for posting the link.

I found the following to be particularly interesting, and IMO something that can be said about the majority of fish kept in captivity.

Why is it so important to the diet pay particular attention to? Generally it should be noted that pets from misunderstood animal lovers to get a lot of fodder. It is estimated that over 30% of all pets suffer from obesity. In many aquariums, it does not look much different. An employee of a review aquarium told me that all the fish they found on the cause of death will be investigated and as a result of, among other diseases, the diagnosis will always be "too fat". Despite cautious feeding it has not much changed.

Our Pfleglinge in the aquarium have by far not the movement as in nature, excess calories can not "abschwimmen". The composition of the diet can lead to calorie-rich, compared with the natural food. And the amount of food is based mostly on the ideas of the keeper and not the needs of the animals.

The following quote comes from a dietary study that was performed several yrs ago by some of the leading experts of fish nutrition in North AMerica;

"Fatty infiltration of the liver has also been designated "the most common metabolic disturbance and most frequent cause of death in aquarium fish"

A comment by Rob Toonen (from reefs.org etc) that was originally posted several yrs ago;

A buddy of mine is a fish parasitologist at the University of British Columbia who volunteers with a veterinarian (DVM, PhD in fish disease at Guelph) at a couple of public aquaria to do autopsies on dead fish. He was telling me that the single most common cause of death he's seen since he started to do the autopsies at public aquaria is "fatty liver disease." Although not really a disease, fatty liver is a serious condition in which the liver becomes enlarged, often to the point that it interferes with the other internal organs and is apparently the cause of death.

This is something that I have been harping about for well over a decade, as I am convinced that the vast majority of hobbyists do in fact overfeed their fish. I'm also convinced that many of the health related problems, and even deaths that are experienced within this hobby are in fact diet related.

[skynoch]

I would for sure agree that the majority of us probably do overfeed and it is causing problems in our stock and premature deaths. I for one know I do but when keeping multiple rays in a tank there can be dominance issues and if not well fed the dominant ray can stress the less dominant rays into not eating at all to the point it dies. So I take the lesser of the two evils and overfeed. I try to minimize the dominant ray from taking to much food by cutting it up and spreading it over the tank and in some instances I've hand fed. As my rays have gotten older they actually tend to manage thier own weight fairly well and maintain a healthy weight. For those of you with single rays a healthy weight should be easier to maintain.