Check this out...Pic heavy

Yes I know my post have been shooting out 3 at a time. Im sorry about this but it is out of my control I think AJ is looking into to fix the problem. Well me living in an apartment right now doesn't really work for using a 300 gallon rubbermaid. I thought about building a pond for them but don't have the room really, an aquarium would work much better for now. Yes Bela Im in Ames. I would recommend a 180 or larger (as pups you could have them in smaller for now but they grow fast). Remember for rays too you want wider and longer rather then taller. This summer i almost bought a 360 for them but the guy stop responding emails and everything so still looking. Ive got a pretty good video of the pups and everything..But don't know much about putting it on the internet.
Trevor

 

Bela if you ever wanted to stop by to see things just let me know Im free all the time..

Trevor

 

Alaake you have marble motoros? Where are you located? Did you breed these yourself? If so how big is your female? Theres a guy north of Ames who just had a batch of marbles hes got a lot of very nice rays. I try to feed once a day. Yea the pregnant female was eating a whole lot and my other female is what I think is mature size and she has been eating just as much and sometimes more then big mama. I am thinking she might be pregant but am unsure right now(Im not trying to get my hopes up). But she has grown a lot and keeps getting fatter and fatter. When the pups were born I was thinking they would be a lot bigger then they actually were, because of how long she held them. But they came out pretty fat and healthy so I was really happy about that. I didn't know since this was her first litter if that had anything to do with it or not.

Trevor

 

Just an update on the rays if anyone is interested. All the pups are eating a variety of foods and staying at a healthy size. They are still very active and keep swimming around constantly having a lot of energy. Things are going really good so far.

Trevor

 

If anyone was interested in them. I am going to hold them until they are 4-5 inches just to make it easier on the new owner. At a small size they are a very fragile animal.

Trevor

 

Some more pictures. Kind of cool that they let me pick them up like that. Bill I try to feed them a variety of things. Mostly blood worms and earth worms. I also feed them crushed up shrimp, krill, sinking carnivore pellets, other sinking pellets. Im trying to get them to eat scallops that I shred up in tiny pieces but they don't seem to want to eat that yet. Also pretty soon Im going to try to get them to eat live ghost shrimp and feeder guppies. They will also eat black worms but there isn't a good place around here to get them so I'll just do without.
Trevor

 

Yea AJ looks like the problem is fixed thanks JB really appreciate it.

Trevor

 

Some more recent shots of the rays. They are finally starting to develop some color and they will keep coloring up with age. Some of the pics aren't that good because I don't have my sisters nice camera anymore so I got to deal with what I have. These were taking during and after feedings so there are some food floating around in a couple of the shots.

 

Good question.. I used to do sugar sand for my smaller rays but soon found that to be a bad idea when I got bigger rays. That small sand stuck to their slimey skin and when they would shake it off or stir it up it was so light it would get into the overflows and down into my sump so I got rid of that fine of sand. There is a lot of big ray keepers that do bare bottem tanks for easier maintence and such. But I love the natural look of sand and its fun to watch them sift through it looking for worms and such. So Ive been looking for bigger substrate that they can still barry themselves in, sift around, and not stick to their skin or stir up into the overflows. So I've came down to two options basically but still looking for more ideas, CaribSea African Cichlid Mix or Caribsea Eco Complete I think that black would look awesome with rays. But the Cichlid mix would be a more natural look.

Trevor

 

Some very exciting news I just saw movement in my big female. Shes pregnant again. My girlfriend and I saw them mate about a half an hour after she gave birth. She was way tired that night. I was thinking my other female was pregnant too but shes just a fat and eats like a pig. Shes mature size or what I at least think is a mature female size (from what I have read). So this would make her at about the 43-44 days in her gestation period. Like I had mentioned before they are suppose to be around 90 days to be expecting birth. But it took her over 120 days the first time so it might be awhile.

Trevor

 

Today is the day at about 11:00 PM my big female had 7 healthy pups. Not sure on the sexes yet because they don't stay still enough to check out. I'll post pictures possibly tomorrow or after this weekend.

Trevor

 

Yea Im pretty happy about it. I think I might have to sell these ones Im being over runned with rays.

Trevor

 

I might. There seems to be a lot of people interested in them around here. Maybe if I sold them they would leave as fast as they came.

Trevor