Mental stimulation

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scott s

scott s

Redtail Catfish
MFK Member
Sep 11, 2010
2,781
677
150
Indiana
A couple of interesting comments made in my other post by Matt and Jim. They made comments about mental stimulation for the rays to keep them from getting "bored".

Specifically ice cubes and the play ball that people get for their dogs and fill with treats.

Does anyone else here give their rays "play toys" to keep them busy?


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Two silver dollars down 5 more to possibly go. Pup tank is 2 balas 1 tinfoil and I think all 3 clown loaches my female in that tank loves to splash allot of water out of the tank.

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Silent Bob said:
This is a great question Scott.

Do all of my headless silver dollars count as ray toys?:(
Click to expand...

I was going to ask the same about angels...

My female has been on a rampage for the last week, 3 kills and 2 near misses that I caught in time.

Do I really have to go buy a kong for my ray? Any other good mentally stimulating activity? I've noticed my female swimming in the same pattern around the tank which is a new behavior.
 
dxdx said:
I was going to ask the same about angels...

My female has been on a rampage for the last week, 3 kills and 2 near misses that I caught in time.

Do I really have to go buy a kong for my ray? Any other good mentally stimulating activity? I've noticed my female swimming in the same pattern around the tank which is a new behavior.
Click to expand...

Nice idea. Somebody hit up Kong to make a ray Kong.:D
 
Funny you should say that about swimming in a pattern. My male started doing that just last night. Swimming around the entire footprint of the tank about 4" off the sand. Very cool to watch, just swimming round and round in the same direction. He was swimming around as if he was on patrol!! Very cool.
This morning i found something on the sand (just posted a pic of it) not sure if it is sperm?
dxdx said:
I was going to ask the same about angels...

My female has been on a rampage for the last week, 3 kills and 2 near misses that I caught in time.

Do I really have to go buy a kong for my ray? Any other good mentally stimulating activity? I've noticed my female swimming in the same pattern around the tank which is a new behavior.
Click to expand...
 
Another cool thing you can do with rays to stimulate/enrich them is do basic operant conditioning (target training, moving point A to point B on a hand signal etc.....). Rays pick up on it fairly quickly. I've even had mixed groups of rays that learned to feed in different areas by species.
 
Funny. I have a heater bracket with suction cups on it that fell off the heater onto the sand in the tank. I started to fish it out and place it back on the heater when I noticed that Sugar Ray likes to move it around the bottom of the tank from time to time. I was like, okay... it's a toy to him. So I left it. Now I come down to the basement and always see it in a different location. I left the bottom of the tank open and clear for him, but now I wonder if I should put some round, aquarium safe objects in it for him to play with? Hmmm...

-Rich
 
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