Compatitble Freshwater Stingray Tankmates

[CarloM12]

Hello everybody. I have a question regarding motoro stingray tankmates. I have three motoro stingrays in a 75 gallon bare bottom tank, with 3 silver dollars, and a 5-6 inch arowana. The stingrays average around 6 inches in diameter. I also have a 125 gallon tank, and I am going to move all of those fish into it. However, I wanted to know what tankmates can coexsist with the stingrays, because I recently had this dilemma not too long ago, where I introduced a teacup stingray with discus, and they tortured the crap out of it by biting or grazing on its ends, and it died in three days. I had severums in the 75 gallon at one point with the two motoro stingrays, and they did well, but when I introduced the third one they began to pick on it a bit, but I caught it early and took them out. So I hear people tell me Geophagus work, Severums, even Oscars, I don't know how that is possible. What cichlids work with stingrays, and what other fish work that aren't cichlids? Could it be a dominance thing, maybe if I put the stingrays in first then put other fish in it might change something? Let me know your thoughts below. Thanks.

 

[Colin_T]

I don't think you should add any more fish to the tank. You have a juvenile Arowana that is going to reach 2 feet or more in length. The stingrays will get bigger and once they are all mature the tank is going to have a lot of bioload, mainly from the Arowana.

 

[CarloM12]

Yes I can understand, but not even a bigger school of silver dollars for the time being, and once the arowana gets bigger I can see what I want to do.I don't want areas of the tank to look bare, and if the arowana is up top, the stngrays below, I feel like I need more fish in the middle. I will have 3 Fluval canister filters on the tank for when they are larger, only 2 for now. I will have a fluval 406 and a fluval 306, then add another 306 when the arowana gets large

 

[Colin_T]

you could add 3 or 4 more silver dollars so there is a bigger school jut don't add too many fish because the more fish, the more water changes you will need to do to keep the stingrays healthy

 

[Chief Brody]

Ok obviously everyone is gonna ***** about the tank size but that aside - I think you can actually get away with a swarm of top feeding tetras. I'm going to attempt this once my tetras come out of qt. The idea behind this is that the bottom grazing rays won't take too many tetras and some coexistence should be possible. I have a 180gallon for this and I'd still rather something larger but we'll see. I might just grow the rays out for a while and pass them on to a friend's 500

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[Chief Brody]

Cichlids are bottom feeders and territorial disputes will arise. Rays have a thick slime coat too that might be irresistible to certain fish that like to nip/pick

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[Colin_T]

I think you can actually get away with a swarm of top feeding tetras.

he has a 6 inch Arowana that will eat anything small and slender
realistically he needs deeper bodied fishes so they look less like food

 

[Chief Brody]

Didn't see the dragon fish..... yeah, that's a horse of a different color!

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[Chief Brody]

Honestly maybe some small prolific ciclid you don't really care about losing like kribs. As they breed they'll create a secondary food source in all the fry. Cichlids are a bit on the boney side for feeders generally but the rays shouldn't mind that, they crack clams in the wild so... you'll inevitably have survivors. Kribs are quite resilient. Convicts might work as well but maybe when the rays are older. Kribs are smaller; shouldn't really be any kind of threat to healthy rays. There's bound to be a few dive bomb attacks here n there as the rays are bound to be nosey but this is probably what I'll be doing:
180gallon high tech planted with pool filter sand substrate
Big school of neons
2-3 rays
2 breeding pairs of kribs
With neo shrimp in the sump

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[Colin_T]

180gallon high tech planted with pool filter sand substrate
Big school of neons
2-3 rays
2 breeding pairs of kribs
With neo shrimp in the sump

The rays will eat the neons
If you want something blue what about Melanotaenia praecox? Adults should be deep enough not to become stingray food

 

[CarloM12]

Okay I think silver dollars work well with anything, but I’m looking at other schooling groups similar to them. I have these beautiful Roseline sharks and I am moving them to the 75 gallon but realistically they are perfect for the stingrays because they are definitely big enough to be with them, and they provide a stunning look when all 8 of them as 6 inch fish go across my tank. However eventually I’m aware they may become food as the rays grow. I’m just looking for something like that.

 

[Colin_T]

The only fish I can think of that grow high in the body are discus, angels, rainbowfish and some of the bigger gouramis like snakeskin or pink kissing gouramis. You tried discus before and it didn't go well. Angels will probably be the same. Rainbowfish prefer medium hard alkaline water and will eventually become Arowana food, and gouramis don't live in groups.

If you get the pH to 7.0 or slightly above and have a GH around 150ppm then rainbowfish would be ok but you will have to move them out when the Arowana gets bigger. If you had a group of Glossolepis incisus or Melanotaenia lacustris or herbertaxelrodi, that would give you colour and they would swim around together. But you would have to buy adult fish so they don't get eaten and that will cost more than buying young fish.

 

[CarloM12]

I guess you're right, I should just stick to what I have, I will just buy more silver dollars. Also, at my LFS they have these strigata pikes, still small but defintely big enough to not be eaten. Also bala sharks come to mind as a similar fish to the silver dollars but I know each one gets 12 inches and are extremely messy so I guess its a bad idea. I put the picture of the pikes below from my LFS, its a pair. I have a few LFS' that I go to, but this one has several big fish and they have big enough tanks to do so. A lot of my other ones have small fish that will defeintely be stingray or arowana food.