Whats up with Rays and Brains?

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Must be some type of deficiency in their diet. wonder if more people started feeding smaller fish w/ heads or just the heads to their rays if the rays would leave their tank-mates alone? I'm naughty and feed my tank w/ goldfish and the rays will eat a few each time ( at least the heads) But have never touched a tank-mate. I mean instead of feeding just fillets... like asking the butcher for a salmon head ect and tossing it in every month or so? just fish out whatever they don't finish off in an hour?

personally you guys post so many threads about fish missing their heads from otherwise fine tank-mates ect there has to be some rhyme or reason to it since its not just isolated cases/rays..

And sorry for the loss Trev.. that looks like it was a stunner.

so dug around abit... from what I can tell fish heads are high in Iodine, and the B-Vit spectrum. ?

You know what you might be onto something... I have read all the headless fish stories from ray owners, and i have never personally had it happen. But a main staple of there diets in my tank is whole silversides. I started doing this because a local breeder in NY i deal with uses them and his rays are phenomenal. He has also never mentioned a headless fish with his rays....
 
it has soft areas to get into with their small scraper type mouth and nutritious. also keeping prey pinned while you slowly eat them is prob more hassle than chewing a head off first
 
Brains and eyes they love

The fish may have died first then the rays chew the brains eyes and gills

I have seam my rays pin a 13" tinfoil to the front glass and move the fish around carefully not chewing until it gets the head in its mouth

This may just be the rays kill move


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You know what you might be onto something... I have read all the headless fish stories from ray owners, and i have never personally had it happen. But a main staple of there diets in my tank is whole silversides. I started doing this because a local breeder in NY i deal with uses them and his rays are phenomenal. He has also never mentioned a headless fish with his rays....

Thats interesting, i feed my rays silversides and the eat the head and spit out the rest of the body. I feed silversides, nightcrawlers, shrimp and massivore and have never had a ray eat a tankmate and my azuls and the rays have been together almost a year and a half. I never understood why they didnt eat the whole thing. They chew up the body but never eat it.
 
Thats interesting, i feed my rays silversides and the eat the head and spit out the rest of the body. I feed silversides, nightcrawlers, shrimp and massivore and have never had a ray eat a tankmate and my azuls and the rays have been together almost a year and a half. I never understood why they didnt eat the whole thing. They chew up the body but never eat it.

What size are your rays

Anything below 10" don't seam to take down larger fish


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What size are your rays

Anything below 10" don't seam to take down larger fish


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My bigger ones are not huge yet, but I have three over 10 inch Maybe 14 or 15inch and have not had a problem.
 
What size are your rays

Anything below 10" don't seam to take down larger fish


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My bdxleo when it was 8-9" tried to eat Lima cats and Niger cats. He has gotten bigger and tried to take a gar and a smaller rays. The smaller rays have been find and got away. I saved the cats.

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