Research

Research at stingrays is very little and what we know is from trying and experimenting . Most things are learned on the job. But what to do if you have a stingray who is, ain 't feeling well, but is behaving well for the rest of the time. You want to do a research, what is going on. This research is best to be done through a veterinary surgeon. But the same as with all animals you want to go to a vet who has some experience with stingrays. I don't know in the USA and other countries but in Holland you have a little problem. Most of the vets don't even know that freshwater stingrays exists. A friend of mine had a problem with 2 of his pearl stingrays and wants to investigate what the problem was. He found a fish specialist ( koi doctor) who was willing to do the research. It was for him the first stingray he ever treated.

 Before we can investigate an animal we have to get in the neighborhood of the animal. The ray has been caught and placed in an container. The water in the container is the same as the tank water. This way the ray doesn't 't get a temperature or Ph shock.
Know we put some drops of tranquilizer in the water and the ray slowly is getting in a light sleep. This has to be done, else the ray isn 't letting anybody touching him. Or wen you can touch him the ray can get a lot of stress with all the consequences of that. It also prevents smashing his tail or in any other ways damage to the ray. In the picture the owner is checking if the ray is a sleep.

On this picture we strike with a little stick over the wart of this animal. Most of the big adult rays ( most of the motoros ), specially pearl rays have these warts on their tail. I expected to be a very meat like growth but in reality it is as hard as rock. Made out of the same material as the stinger is, some bone like stuff.
 

Here you see the size of a adult pearl ray, his disk size is 20". You can see the sedation is working well the animal is completely relaxed.

                                                                                                 
 

Here the animal is lying on its back. The cloves are for protection both ways. It's protecting you hands against the ray, and the ray against nail scratches.
Checking the mouth for irregularities.

Not visible on this picture is the sample we took from the gills of the stingray. We first thought  it could be gill worms because the ray breathed rapidly. The result of this sample was that is was not gill worms. Their was nothing to see under the microscope of this sample.
Because the animal is sedated anyway, we investigated the animal on worms or other parasites. We put a tube in in his anus and injected a fluid. The we sucked the fluid out with a syringe and put this on a glass plate. This plate was examined under the microscope on worms, and other parasites.

 

         
 

Could this be possible without a sedation? I don't think so. The stomach was clean, no parasites or worms their.
The investigation is finished the animal is put back in the main tank (4300 gallon). We let the ray hanging in the water, fresh tank water running through his gills. When he comes out of sedation you slowly let the ray down on the bottom of the tank. After a while the ray is fully conscious and swimming if nothing happened. I saw the animal a week later and he was doing very well.

Eventually the investigation showed a anchor worm infection, and a bad one. The anchor worms probable came in the tank while feeding life goldfish to the arrowana's. But with  a tank of only wild caught animals something can slip through quarantine sometimes.