Searching for the perfect ray diet...your input please!

[Booger]

It’s become readily apparent that providing an ideal diet for my rays is more of a challenge than I originally envisioned. These are really the first fish I’ve had that I’ve been committed to providing the absolute best in nutrition. I currently have only 3 rays, but will be purchasing 4-6 more shortly. All of them are juveniles that need to grow nice and big as I’d really like to induce breeding. Here are my priorities, in order:

1) Complete Nutrition – Bar none, this is most important for obvious reasons
2) Desirable to fish – I want my rays to gorge themselves and put on weight quickly. Also, this means the food has to sink!
3) Not water soluble – I’ve tried a few foods that compromised my water quality as they dissolved in the water
4) Convenient – Not a big one, but hours spent acquiring, prepping, feeding, and resources to store food do add up. Everything has to be in small pieces for my small rays.
5) Cost effective – Again, not a big one, but I can’t spend >$100/month on fish food. It just ain’t in the budget.

Currently, my rays are fed a staple diet of blackworms. They are a little pricey, but the fish love them and I can always keep a large ball of worms in the tank for them to graze on without polluting the water. What else should I feed to complete their diet, keeping my priorities in mind? What about vitamins, etc.? Let me know what you think.

 

[rvrrays]

Grocery store smelt. Even better if you can get them with the guts and heads on. They run about $3.50/lb.

Grocery store shrimp. I get the 51-60 count/lb. for around $4.00. These are also even better if you can get them with the head on.

Both of these can be dropped in the tank whole or easily broken into pieces. They can also be bought in bulk if you have a place to store 20 lbs. worth.

Live crayfish and night crawlers are also great supplements. If you can raise your own feeder fish I think that they are a great option (guppies, mollies, convicts, etc.).

I also occasionally buy a really lean steak or beefheart and cut it into small worm-like slices. I also do small scallops from time to time.

Colin

 

[Booger]

How should I prep the smelt and shrimp? My rays are still very small (5" disc), so feeding whole is out of the question.

Also, what type of shrimp, specifically? Last time I was at the store, there were at least 5 different types of shrimp for sale!

 

[meis]

I have weened mine on Hikari sinking carnivore pellets. This is all I feed them, and they love in now.

 

[rvrrays]

A hefty pair of kitchen scissors does a great job. Cut them into small pieces.

Shrimp = I normally get head off, shell on white shrimp. It really doesn't matter.

My newborn pups generally eat shrimp and smelt within the first 10 days.

Colin

 

[bluedempsey]

they love to eat credit cards
i agree with the smelt
and shrimp i occaionally put a multivitamin in their food

 

[Herb]

I feed mine mainly salmon and halibut
couple times a month some cooked clams and mussels

 

[radiom]

mine is on a main diet of prawns cut into bite size.... added occasional mussels and squid (cleaned of course)....

 

[K.O.D]

Earthworms, whitebait, prawns cockle and mussel, but their favourite by far is earthworms, we buy 2kg a month for our rays

 

[Booger]

How aggresively do your rays take food? Mine seem to slowly graze rather than go into a frenzy. Water is fine and I keep my tank at 80-81. But I suppose I do feed heavily and my fish are still relatively small. I would like to eventually add tankmates with noticably more assertive eating habits, but I'm afraid the rays won't be able to compete for food.

So far, I've fed mine New Life Spectrum pellets, beefheart, earthworms, and krill. Cut up earthworms seem to be the most popular. I hope my fish will eventually take more to pellets are they are nutritionally complete, relatively cheap, water stable, and require zero prep.

I have smelt, squid, and shrimp in the freezer that I plan to try over the next couple weeks. I couldn't find mussels or cockles, unfortunately. I plan on grabbing a sharp knife and making my own meat medley sometime this week. This should make it easy to observe which foods go over best with the fish.