Sharing my new “red Lucy black diamond”!

[OnlyFinsCT]

I’ve been keeping rays for 18+ years. When I started with Ray keeping we didn’t have the morphs that you see in the market today. We just had pure p. Leopoldi, p. Henlei, p14, a few other cheaper varieties of brown rays and marbled motoros were just starting to be a thing. What a long way the hobby has come in that time…I’m happy to share a photo of a young “red Lucy black diamond” female that I just acquired. I’m working on putting some weight on her right now…she is the first Ray I’ve meet that won’t take a night crawler but is taking bloodworms very willingly and taking bites of shrimp. She’s a beautiful ray and I’m very happy with her.

View attachment IMG_4064.jpeg

 

[danotaylor]

She purty

 

[DB junkie]

You've been out there keeping rays for 18+ years and never found this place?!??!! Learning curve had to be brutal.....

Crazy to think how much the rays have changed yet doesn't seem like anything else has - different rays, different people pushing them, yet doesn't seem like much advancement in terms of actual "keeping"......

Congrats on your happiness! Wishing you the best of luck with her. Very interesting looking ray!!!

 

[spotfin]

Interesting ray. Do Leos typically have eyes set that high?

 

[DB junkie]

Absolute godsend..... Good advice on ray-keeping simply didn't exist.

Good to see others out there still at it! Definitely not a lot of seasoned keepers still at it.

What else are you keeping?????

 

[OnlyFinsCT]

Absolute godsend..... Good advice on ray-keeping simply didn't exist.

Good to see others out there still at it! Definitely not a lot of seasoned keepers still at it.

What else are you keeping?????

My main interested are rays and turtles. I’ve got a couple of cool turtles right now, a fly river turtle and an albino Chinese softshell. For other fish I also keep discus although have started to get away from that, tiger moray eel, blood parrots, severums.

 

[troublesum]

Lucy in the sky with diamonds

 

[OnlyFinsCT]

Just want to update quick on this female; she was definitely the most difficult Ray I’ve had to get eating. I believe she unfortunately developed gill flukes during shipping. I treated with prazi pro and general cure and made a homemade gelatin food for her consisting of tilapia, shrimp, krill, salmon (very small amount), nightcrawlers, bloodworms, northfin pellets, massive pellets and garlic. She’s been eating that 3x a day and this morning I saw her eat some shrimp! The dent in her forehead is pretty much gone and she’s been doing very well.

 

[danotaylor]

O OnlyFinsCT what symptoms did you notice that caused you to think it was gill flukes? Was she breathing heavily in addition to being off her food?
I recently acquired a pure BD male that is not eating well. He was exclusively feed Canadian night crawlers for 8 months prior to coming home w me. He eats a little raw chopped shrimp, but even when I dropped a night crawler from my yard in the other day he swam right over it uninterested. It’s only been 10 days and he has eaten some shrimp so I’m not terribly concerned at this point.
My original trio continue to do well and eat and I did have the evidence of a successful mating in my tank last week, so perhaps it’s in part stress related from my other male. No real evidence of adverse aggression though. His skin is perfect and he appears to be in great condition still.
Any thoughts?

 

[OnlyFinsCT]

O OnlyFinsCT what symptoms did you notice that caused you to think it was gill flukes? Was she breathing heavily in addition to being off her food?
I recently acquired a pure BD male that is not eating well. He was exclusively feed Canadian night crawlers for 8 months prior to coming home w me. He eats a little raw chopped shrimp, but even when I dropped a night crawler from my yard in the other day he swam right over it uninterested. It’s only been 10 days and he has eaten some shrimp so I’m not terribly concerned at this point.
My original trio continue to do well and eat and I did have the evidence of a successful mating in my tank last week, so perhaps it’s in part stress related from my other male. No real evidence of adverse aggression though. His skin is perfect and he appears to be in great condition still.
Any thoughts?

It was a combination of lethargy, heaving breathing at times, no appetite, and rapid weight loss immediately after shipping that led me to suspect gill flukes. This was a well eating, plump ray and within 48 hours after arrival I started to notice the dent in the forehead. It has been my experience that stress, particularly around shipment can bring them on.

I’d give the DIY food a shot now and a round of prazi if you don’t see improvement quickly. I’d start offering smaller meals multiple times a day as well. This girl was even refusing nightcrawlers which I had never seen in a ray before but as soon as I offered the homemade food she started readily eating it 3x a day. All I did to make the food was basically blend up shrimp, tilapia, scallops, salmon (careful to only use a small amount of this), nightcrawlers, a couple of brands of pellets I had on hand, garlic (appetite stimulant), a few pouches of Knox unflavored gelatin (more than you think you’d need, I’d go with 6 pouches), some boiling water in a smoothie sized blender. Pour it into a thin layer in a Tupperware and let set in the fridge for a few hours. I fed it refrigerated for a couple days, then cut into cubes and froze it and she is still eagerly accepting them.