Hello fellow MFKers
,
I have taken the time to consolidate Nic's original post into a single more manageable thread. Feel free to post your comments and opinions. Only you know the conditions of your ray, so remember to use discretion when applying this information. Please read the length of the article, prior to committing to a method. Often times a combination works the best! Hope this helps.
-Jeff
Hard to train: Shroederi, Reticulated, Iwamae (Antenna ray), Menchacai, Otorongo etc.
Easier to train: Motoros, Laticeps, sp. Peru, Hystrix, Henlei, Leos
1) Soaking Freeze Dried Krill with California Black Worms goo/water (Great for Retics)
2) Gridding Pellets up and stuffing them into foods they are currently eating (i.e. shrimps, worms, and etc.)
Recommended pellets: Hikari Sinking Cichlid Gold, Hikari Sinking Carnivore, and Hikari Massivore
Note: Sometimes the pellets are too hard for them to take. You may find that soaking them first may help them accept it better.
3) Feed heavily for days/weeks to establish health and weight. Once it is established that they are ready you can starve them for a week. A fat based tail usually means that they have fat reserves (Use personal judgment). When they begin to beg and become aggressive for food, introduce the new foods.
In conjunction with starving method: Allow overnight marinate/soaking for smelts or silver sides with Shrimp. This method works for clams, cockles, and mussels.
4) Mixing new foods with foods the rays are currently eating (i.e. bloodworms, California Black Worms, earthworms, etc.)
Note: It is a good idea to start feeding them chopped up or whole earthworms (depending on the size of the ray). Once they eat them at leisure, you can use the earthworms as tubes and vessels for stuffing other foods.
5) Having more than one ray also helps the training process. This could be due to the fact that they feel competition for food. The other(s) will follow suit.
6) Feeding them with
metal prongs. Freshwater Stingrays have sensory pores around the underside of their disc near their nose and mouth. These jelly-filled sensory pores, are present in most elasmobranches and allow sharks and rays to detect minute electric fields generated by living things. This is especially useful for freshwater stingrays because it helps them to hunt down prey that might be buried in the riverbed or hiding in murky water. I have heard these also help them sense metal, thus feeding from metal feeding tongs is a good 'learning tool' to get them to eat prepared foods.
Wild Caught: Start them on glass shrimp and California Black Worms to fatten them up. Then use the starvation method.
Remember to be persistent and, most importantly, patient with it comes to training rays with new foods!
Credit to Nic, Miles, and many other MFK members.
Methods to Break Rays to New/Other Foods
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