ONLY eating live foods

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congodrew

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 8, 2006
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I have 4 reticulated rays at about 4-5" that arrived just a couple months ago. A few of them are down with dillies/earth worms but for the most part they are only taking black worms and gut-loaded ghost shrimp. I have introduced many other foods (krill, sand eels, plankton, silversides, etc.) that were soaked in vitamin supplements and garlic but still no luck. I initially wanted to get them plump and healthy on the live foods but now they are doing excellent and i want to introduce other more beneficial foods.

So my main question is what foods do you other ray keepers have luck with when you recieve new wild caught rays?

Thanks in advance! This looks like an AWESOME forum.
 
Generally all rays go through the weaning process from strictly live food to prepared or frozen stuff. What I used to do was to incorporate shrimp or krill in with whatever they were eating regularly, then gradually lessen the ratio of the live food.

Shrimp/krill seems to be the winner as far as what they'll take to more readily after the weaning process. From there, I've fed cut fish, squid, beef heart, etc. Once started, they become less finicky and more voracious.

Being that you have small retics, you should be cutting whatever you offer them in tiny bite sized pieces as they have very small mouths. If you find them grabbing the food and raking it across the ground to break it, chances are the pieces are too big.

Welcome to MFK :)....I hope we can provide a wealth of information for you. Don't be afraid to ask questions and add your 2 cents where you have the knowledge. Enjoy!
 
what is interesting my retics were only eating dead food, staved them for a couple of days and they were eating frozen but not a lot of it. So i started them on black worms again to fatten them up.
 
i just started feeding shrimp to my retics, i've had them for 5 years!! my male will still only eat earthworms. my female is aggressive as hell and will eat both shrimp and earthworms. dry rubbing the new foods on the old foods, atleast give them a taste by kinda faking them out. who knows, retics are funny like that
 
congodrew;501705; said:
I have 4 reticulated rays at about 4-5" that arrived just a couple months ago. A few of them are down with dillies/earth worms but for the most part they are only taking black worms and gut-loaded ghost shrimp. I have introduced many other foods (krill, sand eels, plankton, silversides, etc.) that were soaked in vitamin supplements and garlic but still no luck. I initially wanted to get them plump and healthy on the live foods but now they are doing excellent and i want to introduce other more beneficial foods.

So my main question is what foods do you other ray keepers have luck with when you recieve new wild caught rays?

Thanks in advance! This looks like an AWESOME forum.
Click to expand...

you really cant get any more benifical than live food, you could vary the live food more though.
 
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