New to Rays

Research some more as all that info is on here.

you have more experience than me in fishkeeping so you'll do fine. It was a trial and error for me and wasted a few $ks on the drain.

in AUS the most common is motoro. don't buy too young puppies. if you can see the parents for their looks the better. a good seller will feed the pups infront of you - make sure it eats. if you have spare $$$$$ you can venture to the other variants of rays available.

Males don't get big about 45cm but still you will need a wide tank.

there's a lot of info on stickies here so just browse it.

Smallest and cheapest ray is the brazilian hystrix. Great starter ray, kind of hard to find, and other rays are commonly mislabeled as hystrix so be careful.


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vamptrev said:

Smallest and cheapest ray is the brazilian hystrix.

Click to expand...

I would have to full disagree with this statement as scobina are smaller than hystrix and retics are about the same size and least expensive. Unless you are talking by AU standards...

motoro is the typical first ray
Get a super large tank 6'x4'x2' high as a minimum or buy true hystrix rays as they don't get very big but will still require a tank pretty big because all rays produce an enormous amount of ammonia.

Is there Bio load exaggerated? I know its probably a lot because of there size but what makes a 20 inch ray so different then a 20 inch Cichla for example?

I think when people say they're hard to keep and for the more experiences keeper it is a redundant statement because any new aquatic venture is new and therefore we're probably not that clued up, ultimately if you keep water biologically clean and to their requirements I can't see what will go wrong.


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Rays don't handle stress as well as other fish plus they need lots of food. Most people are not ready to handle their bio load or the water changes required to keep them healthy. Nor are the ready for the food bill.

Get some motoros and raise them up until you can upgrade or rehome them. They are hardy, inexpensive, and should be fairly available. If you can keep them healthy and happy then spending more cash on a ray won't seem like such a big deal. Are fw rays even legal in AU though? I would think that they could survive in the wild so they may be banned...?