Monster sting ray help

[brucecost]

There is a pet store in Park Ridge Illinois that has a wonderful ray exhibit, PM for details

[Bowhunterking]

I tried PMing you Bruce but idk if it went through...

[Pazzoman]

You should head over to the marine section and pm or look at zoodivers work. He is a marine biologist in florida...he works on projects like these all the time!

[Zoodiver]

I'm gonna move this to the SW shark and ray section. Might get more help there from SW ray keepers who have large scale pools.

As for the pool, it's an easy build but there is much more to it than building the pool and keeping the rays. For a public interaction area, you need to be up to all of you local public safety standards as well as carry proper insurance.

For a basic cownose touch pool that will be in the public and needs to look good (not just a basic holding pool) you're looking at $50,000 (roughly).
I'd pick Cownose and many Southern stingrays. Bat rays thrive in cold water and leopard / honeycomb / whiptail rays are not only hard to get, but hard to keep and are becoming very expensive. Cownose and Southerns are very hardy and do well with human interaction.

If that's all within your scope, let me know and we can go from there.

[Bowhunterking]

That sounds all doable. Cow nose rays will be just fine what other days can go with them. I won't be building it for at least 5 years, but I want to plan it now.. I was thinking of making a pond in the corner, making sort of a triangle shaped pond. Making rock looking walls our of concrete and a acrylic price in the middle of one of the walls so you can see through the water, as well as above it.

[Zoodiver]

Triangle would work if you made it big enough. The problem becomes the angles make some of it unusable for the rays. When doing an odd shaped tank, I always suggest drawing a circle in the middle of it - and that will show you the actual space for the animals.
Building the display itself will usually consume half the budget. Life support will wipe out the rest. You'll want to over filter it in all aspects (mechnical, biological and sterlization).

Here's a build thread of an older touch pool my old team renovated. Sadly, just a few weeks ago the current staff taking care of it made a HUGE mistake and ended up dumping liquid chlorine into it - twice. Pretty much killed everything.

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/fo...-thread-on-MFK

[Bowhunterking]

Wow that is a nice pond. What would I be looking at gal wise to keep 2 or 3 cownose. And where would I be able to find the regulations for such a pond ( as far as insurance and safety regulations)
Thank you
Ron


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[Zoodiver]

First, talk to your insurance carrier directly to see what they require. Then go from there. Your city my have building requirements to meet when putting in a single large system like that.

I'd suggest a few thousand gallons of volume to offset the ray waste production. Thinking in a circular fashion, I'd say 10' round for up to 5 rays would be fine. The nice part is depth doesn't really matter - as long as they have room to beat their wings to swim.