Pics of my new Sting Ray and Tangs!

Hey so I am expecting a lot of criticism about my new ray, and while i am open to it, please be respectful. PLEASE READ THIS FIRST. before you post anything, let me tell you what i know. I KNOW that its people opinions that rays need 180 gallons or larger. I KNOW its peoples opinions that they are not reef safe. I KNOW that its peoples opinions that they need extremely oxygenated water. I KNOW many of the things that im sure many of you are going to tell me so please save your keyboard a few words. I love all you guys but im not in the mood to hear a bunch of stuff i already know.

so, on the other hand, i bought this little guy 3 days ago and he is doing great. I feed him sand eels twice daily. I re-arranged my rock to give him plenty of space to swim around. he hasnt bothered any snails, crabs, shrimp... heck he hasnt bothered anything. his name is charles... ray charles . He likes to swim against the glass back and forth across the tank and its really cool to watch. my tank is 5 feet long so trust me he has plenty of room to swim.

i am trusting my skimmer to put enough oxygen in my tank and will add more to the sump if needed. he is getting along with everything. i drip acclimated him for about 30 minutes. hes got a great appetite and i believe that as long as i feed him well there wont be any problems. Yes, i do know that in a while he will become to large to be comfortable, so i will return him or maybe even donate him to one of you that wants a ray to adopt. that hopefully wont be for a couple years though, so im going to enjoy him now.

here are some pics of him and my new Naso tang. I also got a new Powder brown tang that isnt pictured.

Thanks for looking!

Here he is after a nice sand bath


here he is doing his favorite glass hover


here is my new naso tang with his new best friend my foxface


and here is my tank from a corner angle. the rock is re arranged now different that this picture and there is a TON of swimming room but this is here to give you an idea of how much room he really has


thanks for looking and please be respectful!

 

5 feet long with a small strip of sand across the front is not large enough for a ray.

Sorry that you don't care to provide it with a big enough tank and decided to just get one anyway. Looking at the side angle there's nowhere near enough room, just a small strip. That's a bit of a prison there. Yes he will live, yes it will swim back and forth, no it is not comfortable. As for being respectful, please be respectful to your animals and take my post at face value, not a personal insult.

Congrats on the tang. What kind of skimmer do you have for these creatures?

 

What's the zigzag in the last picture ?

 

if you read carefully, you would have noticed (i hope) that i re aquascaped. i moved much of my rock to the corners and up. i now have 75% of the sand bed open for him. i dont take it as a personal insult, it just frusterated me to see that as much as i try to stress the reading of what i say, people still jump to opinions. right now i have a CPR marine tower running but i am looking into a new skimmer soon. maybe an eshopps

 

oh my fuge wasnt set up yet in that pic 2 weeks ago so they are mangroves. one looks sideways due to the light distortion because of the rounded edges

 

Take a picture of the new aquascape then?

That would help confusion. You wanted to show the swimming room in the last picture, all I see is the lack of room?

 

okay?

 

So, out of curiosity, how did you get the ray home? I know they didn't put him in a bag... was it a styrofoam box filled with water? One of our LFS has a ray, but he is freshwater. So cool to watch. Have fun with him while you can

 

Actually, they did put him in a bag. He is quite small, about 5 inches max diameter... he did fine in the bag and I live close to the LFS so it was no big deal. Thanks for the encouragement, sometimes i just sit in my room and watch him swim and enjoy himself.

 

I agree with your stance here. If you had posted saying look what I got, think my tank is big enough? I would of been all over it.

That aside keeping anything we keep in any of our tanks does not even come close to simulating their real environment and they would all really enjoy more swimming room. IMO when it comes down to it, keeping an aquarium is a choice to keep creatures in less than perfect conditions for what they are. The best we can do is to provide the very best of what we can for them. It's also good to see that you have already accepted the fact that it won't last forever. Keep the pictures coming and best of luck with your new ray.