With The recent loss of my Silver Aro I've decided to redecorate his old tank and get a stingray. Ive heard that Reticulated Rays are one of the easier ray species to keep and i thought it would be perfect to transition into the hobby. So anyway im on the hunt for one cheap on the internet and am wondering if any one knows where i should look. If anyone has any comments as to what to get its all welcome. Thanks
Best place to find a Reticulated Ray
- Thread starter zimmermanst
- Start date
those are tougher tham you think, get a hysterix or a motoro, much better eating and long term health. tea cups are a joke. sure $50 cheap, much harder to pack on weight than the others. better have at least a 150
What size tank was your silver in? Retics are not any harder from my experience just most people treat them like a cheap fish and don't take care of them like they will a $150 or $200 motoro. Clean water, big tank, quality food is all these rays need same as all the other rays but people buy a "teacup" and put it in a 50 gallon tank and wonder why they are dead in 6 weeks. P.S. I have retics and my female now 6 years old is 15 inch disc with a 10 inch tail and has given me 4 healthy litters of pups.
Ive got a 110 gallon which was wrongfully sold to me as a 155(my fault tho should have gone off the dimensions instead of what the guy said) but i am in the process of building a 200 gallon specifically for rays, really short, really wide, and really long. But thank you for reassuring me with the Retics, i am pretty meticulous with my water quality i change filter media once a month or sooner if i get spikes in any parameter, i clean the gravel and sand in my tanks twice a month, and spot clean and check all my levels 2 to 3 times a week as well. i know some of the people on here will say i dont clean enough but my water quality is always well within acceptable levels.
Despite someone calling retics a "joke", they are great stingrays. Easy to house bc they dont get as large. If you are lucky enough to find a locally bred one than u will be fine. Clean water good food is the majority of the work! I say go get em! I did and wthey are some of my fav pets i have. Even more than my asian red
any ray locally bred is a sure deal, just might not be cheap like you said in ure post, cheap tea cups have there pelvic bones showing and are slow/hard to pack on weight.
110 is obviously too small for a ray for life, but you kinda already figured that out by what you said in your post. having water perimeters within the "acceptable range" really doesn't cut it for rays they need it in the ideal range. On a 110 tank I would say at a minimum that you check filter media once a week and change out if dirty, change half water volume once a week, and syphon sand 2-3 times weekly and these are minimum IMO. I have a 600 system for my rays currently it houses 3 adults 2 retic and 1 hystrix, 2 juvenile and 1 pup and I still change out half my water volume once a week I change filter socks out once a week and I gravel van almost daily! And it may be why I am one of the very few that has adult retics that are mature and breeding. If you don't have time and patience to devote to rays and the care they require please stick with fish 
If you are looking for rays, go to a local lfs and see if they can order one for you. I ordered one from a dealer that I know well and it cost me like $65 for a retic and he is eating like a champ and has doubled in height, not in diameter, since I got him two months ago.
you do realize that hystrix, castexi, orbs and many other rays (even motoros) have been sold labeled as "tea cups", not just retics. not only that, but i've seen PLENTY of other ray types imported with very visible pelvic bones, not just retics.
quit using the term tea cup, it is an outdated term that does not refer to a single type.
as long as the person starts by feeding live black worms and very small cut up pieces of earthworms, there should be no reason not to pack on weight, unless the ray in question is already on it's last breath, which is often the case with the improperly exported.