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Go ahead and go to joe's shrimp shack.com. Once again, that's Joe Shrimp shack.com promo code aquarium. Guys, america. Also, don't forget about our guys at the Ohio Fish Rescue. You can find Ohio Fish Rescue on their YouTube page like and subscribe. Also considering donating to the patreon hashtag team. tracy. tracy is the wife of the Ohio Fish Rescue, and she's been under care for a while. They need more funding. She's still in the hospital, in and out, so please pray. And also, this is again, not a sponsored advertisement, but go to aquascape.com or aquascapetraining.com. aquascape is the best pond company that there is, and they have certifications that normally cost a lot of money. Go to their website and sign up until the end of April. All the training is for free due to the COVID reality that we're all in. So don't let this offer go to waste. It's completely free. Get yourself educated on pods. Let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob dolson. Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. So this week we have Matt grogne I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, from Chicago, Stingrays. How are you doing today, Matt?
I'm doing great. How are you?
I am stoked. Stingrays have been one of our most requested podcasts. We try to follow the lead of a lot of our guests, but, yeah, super happy to have you, and thanks again for making the time for us.
Yeah, looking forward to it.
Again, I'm your host, Rob olsen.
I'm Jim colby.
And I'm Adam Miles.
Sharon so this week, jimmy's been having terrible dreams.
Terrible dreams?
Yeah. You dreamt that COVID was over and you're losing all this money due to people not buying excess bread and toilet paper.
Yeah, I'm making a lot of money right now with this going on and everybody's freaking themselves out.
You look pretty weathered. Just on behalf of all of us, we thank you for your dedicated service of working eight days a week filling bread and tortillas.
My company will work ten days a week, but there's only eight days in a week.
There is only eight days.
That is correct.
Let's do some cleanup. And Matt, please chime in wherever you feel comfortable. We got a couple of emails from some of our fans, and let's go over one. It's a little bit lengthy. I sent it to Jimmy earlier this week. So he could prepare for it, because it's a whopper.
Is it a whopper?
It's a whopper. So I believe we have permission to say the gentleman's name. peyton Brown. From peyton brown Aquatics or Brown aquatics I can't remember the YouTube channel.
I think it's brown.
Aquatics he is a 16 year old gentleman that is diving himself headfirst into the aquarium hobby. He is quite intelligent, fun. He's been showing us our discord for a while, and I'm going to try to abbreviate some of this here's. Best effort. Jimmy, I got to say, your last episode on snails so if you're hearing this a couple of episodes before, you know how many weeks ahead, your episode on snails really threw me through for a loop before the podcast. I absolutely loved trumpet snails. They are so fun. Real stir up the substrate, have not harmed anyone, occasionally picking up just to say hi. It turns out I was wrong. I have been raising some plattifry in this 20 gallon tank for like four months now and couldn't figure out why they literally won't grow by the time they should be full grown or at least grown enough where I could sell them to my local fish store. It turns out I have so many snails in there that it's utterly stopped growing. I'm assuming all the calcium depleted out of this water by now. I've always loved all snails, even though they were only good. It turns out again that I was wrong. If I had to estimate, I'd say I have at least 150 bladder snails, otherwise known as mud snails, 100 Malaysian trumpet snails, and 50 round, 1005 mirites. needless to say, my now black substrate is brown, so all calcium has been depleted out of there, and clearly he has to play snail whacka mole.
Whack a mole.
Whack a mole. whack a mole.
Before you even continue on this email, peyton, get yourself some good puffer fish, get yourself some loaches, and above all, some assassin snails and watch the empty shales start to collect or five gallons.
Of bleach because he's using that as a breeder tank, right?
He's going to deal with the snails humanely.
You know what would really work?
What would work?
Dwarf puffer fish.
See the pea puffers?
The little pea puffers? They would love the bladder snails and.
Leave your babies alone. So check them out. Might be something you could get your local fish store if it's open. I don't know if they're essential or not.
They're essential.
Most pet stores are essential because they are providing food for your pets. So if they're selling pet food, dog food, cat food, that sort of thing essential.
Well, call ahead, see if they're open, and see if you can get some pea puffers. These are my next question. You mentioned a DIY trick for Malaysian trumpet snails. Just wondering if you knew any tips for getting rid of bladder snails, something like traps. I don't really want to reset my tank. Thanks. I'll see he didn't even want to bleach his tank. He says, I love the last two episodes of the podcast because they really relate to me. I'd love to see more specific species podcasts. Man. It's like he knew we were going to do a Stingray podcast.
Stingray podcast.
He just knew what was up. Like episode one about angels. He goes on to say, you can call me a Nazi, but I'm waiting on the episode on rams. I'm assuming he means blue German rams and such like that.
Yeah, we should do that shortly, too, because we got some guests coming up in the near future. But we do have a couple of openings where we probably could do blue German ram or gold German ram.
Balloon ram.
I like ram.
Oh, rams are fun.
See, on this podcast, what we try to do is if we're not the experts, we're going to find the experts. That's why we're so happy, happy to have Matt on the podcast is because I've only had a couple of Stingrays in my life. Haven't bred them personally. I've had friends that bred them. But I am by far a novice when it comes to Stingrays. So if we're not the experts, we're going to find them. And we now have to find a ram expert.
There we go.
So again, still waiting on the next episode. Maybe you can do rams. Oh, and Jim, did you redo? Knock it off with the dad jokes. You're far too old for these. Start working on finding your grandpa jokes.
Wow.
Might be a little bit more at your speed, old man. Thanks. Keep it the good work. Can't wait to hear the next podcast.
Won't he be surprised when he sees me standing at the end of his bed with a pillow hovering over his face?
It's to protect him from the COVID right?
That's right.
I'm going to protect him from the.
COVID Didn't you ask me if they're making face masks now?
They are, yeah.
Didn't you ask me if it smells like chloroform?
Yeah, that's right.
By the way, I know how to make it now.
Oh, good. Let's not share that with you.
Yeah, let's get our friend Adam, who is half Arab, half white, and talk about how to make chemicals.
Call amc and see if they'll reboot beer.
I can get that.
All right, next question that we have. This one is from rr. That's it. That's his name.
Is it a pirate?
Very weird email.
Maybe it's a pirate.
Hi. My name is I live apparently it was a typo autocorrect in Israel.
Nice.
Love listening to your podcast. I breed and sell guppies and grammys. Can you make a podcast on Gourmet Fish, please? Maybe bring an expert host from the Us. Thanks in advance. So clearly we're getting people that are demanding more and more fish topics.
That's a great topic. We've never had a conversation about having grammys, and there are so many different gurus. They're pretty easy to breed for the most part, but there are a lot of gourmet breeders down in Florida. We should be able to round up somebody to talk about it.
Well, I think we should definitely take a break because by the time they listen to this story, time will be live and well with people, and they're probably already laughing at it. And yeah, they need a break from getting back to real fish topics.
Yeah.
All right, do you have any news this week?
I have no news at all. How about you, Adam?
No.
Well, on the world we live in, like, I thank Jimmy for bread, I have to thank Adam for all his work trying to make COVID masks.
Yes. Adam, tell us a little bit about what you do when you're not doing a podcast.
Okay.
And cut the sad stuff. We just want to hear about where you work.
I sit and cry in a corner most days.
All right. See, that's the stuff we cut right there.
So I work at a manufacturing place where we're making the face shields that go over people's faces so that when they cough, it helps block all the germs.
Didn't they used to call those projectile vomit shields?
Yeah, I don't know. I always call them riot shields, but riot face shields, but that would be sweet.
So it's a soft plexiglass shield that goes over the doctors or nurses faces, correct.
Yes.
And then you can still wear that mn 95 mask underneath it, but it just helps protect you from germs. And we started making those for male clinic last week, and then I think we're making them for most of the hospitals in Minnesota, and then we're going to be making some for Florida.
And how far are you located from rochester? You're very close, correct?
Like 45 minutes away. We got it designed in a day or two and sent the designs to Mayo, and we started building them. It's like, from being talked to to designing to building them, it took us about a week.
Wow, that's incredible.
And we've done, like, 50 I think they've done like, 50, 60,000 in 45 days.
And so are you guys taking them directly over to rochester, then to the male clinic each day?
The first pallet we did just to make sure that they had some to start getting them in their supply, but I think we're sending a semi every day with pallet, like, 810 pallets a day.
That's incredible. That is incredible.
So, yeah.
So there again, we want to thank all the all the workers out there that are out there fighting the COVID here. Adam is making these masks. I work for a bread company. I stand at Walmart all day long and fill bread for all the customers and stuff.
So what you're saying is you're the front lines.
Yeah, we're the front lines. And Rob has been working from home in his pajamas.
Who says there's pajamas? I wear no pants at all. I don't. Just like we do for the podcast.
Well, that's true. Yeah. Party on.
Happy Tuesday.
All right. Well, I got nothing else. But guys, go to aquariumguyspodcast.com. On the bottom of the website, you'll find our information for Discord. That is our chat client. We have hundreds of people in there chatting about fish help, sharing their tanks, getting good laughs with their latest fish memes. Whatever you want. There's a pile of people there's, even voice chat. And what we began doing now is we have game nights. We play this online version of pictionary. It's kind of fun. So come join us. Come hang out and meet some people like you. I promised I would give a shout out to maverick falcon Four for boosting our server. He is donated. And now we have supreme audio quality on our Discord. So there's no excuse. Go to aquariumguyspodcast. combo the website discord link. Join it and start the party. That's where we're doing this podcast right now, live.
That is fantastic. And again, a big thank you to maverick for jumping in there and helping us get a better audit quality. Now, if we just had some better.
Hosts, we'd be a lot better off in time. We'll work on that. Maybe we'll get a beer sponsor soon.
If we get a beer sponsor, that would be fantastic.
Just not this mcgolden Light stuff, because that's, like, some Minnesota hot dish pan food.
That's very good stuff.
Wait, I thought that they could only sell it in certain states.
It is.
It's a midwest thing.
They're literally limited to that.
Yeah.
So every time I drink these beers and I go on vacation, I order them, they look at me like I'm crazy. They've never heard of them.
I'll tell you. The golden light. What?
Exactly I heard that budweiser said that they can't sell it anywhere else because they put them out of business. So they had, like, a gentleman's agreement.
Really?
The family that owned michelo and the family that owned budweiser, anheuser Bush, they had, like, a gentleman's agreement saying, I won't infringe on your spot, you won't infringe on mine. And they kind of, like, divided the country up. Who says monopolies don't work?
It's oligopolies. That's how the world works.
I love it.
All right, man. How are you doing tonight, buddy?
I'm doing pretty well. How are you guys?
We're fantastic. So, in Chicago, we were just talking about beers, right? What beer do you drink? What is your local beer of choice? Not the big guys.
You know what? I'm not a huge beer guy.
I'm not alone.
I know I'm pretty into the ciders, actually. I catch a lot of crap for it. I get told they're girly drinks, but it's what I'm into.
That's just because clearly they're talking to you over a podcast. They're not seeing your glorious beard.
Exactly right.
Well, thanks again for coming on the podcast. And just to give a little background to the audience, again, you're from Chicago. That's where your business is at Chicago Stingrays. And it's you and Brad I do not remember his last name. Your partner, what is his last name?
Roland.
Fantastic. So what got you specifically into Stingrays? And then secondly, what started your business?
I started a lot, like a lot of people do. I was 14 or 15, went into a local fish store and saw a Stingray swimming around. And you know what? I just had to have it. It was not something I'd ever seen before. Everyone's seen them in zoos and aquariums and all that, but they're the big salt water ocean stingrays that they're cool.
But they make you feel like aladdin and you should ride them home.
Yeah, exactly. They're bigger than you are.
That is flat. Huge. Let me tell you.
Rob'S a large man.
Yeah, bigger than him.
What does that laugh from? You got to help me out.
That's from Fat Albert, man.
I hate my life right now. Sorry to interrupt. Matt, please talk about your magical experience and not my fatness.
I can appreciate that. But, yeah, I saw this thing in there and was kind of one of those I've got to have it. It was just so cool. Two, three days later, I did I didn't know anything about them, to be perfectly honest. I managed to kill that one. Unfortunately, that's the way most first stingrays go for people.
If I may interject at this very point, and you can probably help me with this later in the podcast, but I just want to let you know that you're not alone. My first Stingray also died a terrible death. I had two stingrays. One came with an infection, and there's nothing I could do. I tried to treat it, and it was gone. But the second one was the real tragedy because by then I had enough homework. I had the tank space, I had it eating good, it was doing well, and it literally choked on food and died in front of me.
Seriously?
Yes. I can see the piece of food stuck in its mouth and gill, and there's nothing I can do because this one was not trimmed on the spine, and I wasn't about to Steve irwin my way to a new grave.
I can't say that I blame you on that one. Wow, that's a new one. I have not actually heard that before.
We'll save that questions for down, because I think that all of us have written down a bunch of questions for you. Sure. Your first thing, Ray passed away. And what got you into, I can make money doing this. Did you get successful at this?
You know what? I ended up keeping several raids after that. The first one died, and it's like, okay, that sucked. I mean, it was only $100 at the time, but when you're 1514, whatever, it's a lot of money, especially for one fish. So took a break from rays for a little while, tried a planted tank, was awful at it, and then got back into some more rays. And got kind of into the whole cheap pet store ray. That doesn't come in very healthy. They lived for a little while, but at that point, I still didn't really know what I was doing. At this point. It was hard to find a lot of good information online, but you start kind of researching, looking into it. There were some books out at the time. That helped start doing the research and started learning, managed to keep a few rays alive. About this time is actually when I met my partner brad. He was local, and he was keeping rays as well. So we would buy and sell rays from each other all the time. They probably got tired of being passed back and forth. We were both kind of learning at that point. And really figuring out what we were doing. And kind of improving on it. And kind of became more successful. So fast forward 15 years or so. It takes a couple of breaks here and there, but brad and I both decided. That we wanted to import some rays. From mark hoveners over in the netherlands. At the time, it was just going to be Some personal rays. Not really any plans to sell or anything, but we kind of figured bringing some stuff we want, bring in a couple of extras that we'd sell the local hobbyists that were interested and try and break even. Well, mark took a liking to us, asked us to be his Us reps. Fast forward almost two years, and here we are. It's turned into this monstrosity that started off as what was supposed to be one order of about ten stingrays turned into I think that first order was something like 45 of them. And it's just kind of grown from there.
So now, matt, this podcast. We actually were planning on doing this with brad and possibly you as well. But brad is actually tonight shipping stingrays, and he talked about getting in orders. Apparently, you guys are doing a lot more than that. Now, what do you see on an average basis of stingrays going through your establishment?
It's hard to say. We found it depends on the time of year. Summertime does have kind of a slump, we discovered last year. It seems like the fish hobbyists in general does summertime slump. Sorry, what's that?
I'm from minnesota, and trying to ship fish in the winter is difficult. So for my mind to wrap this around is just really surprising.
You got to definitely take into consideration the winter. As long as there's not a storm blowing through, we're comfortable shipping. In cold weather, you got to prepare for it correctly. Thick styros, several heat packs, some extra water, just to help maintain the heat. There's the nights that okay, it's negative 20 outside. Okay, maybe we don't ship those nights, but there have been several nights that it's well below freezing that we are still comfortable shipping. It's just important to be well prepared. We do buy thick styros that really help contain the heat. And you do have to also keep in mind that these rays, they can tolerate the cold, just not long term. So if a stingray arrives in and the water is chilly, that doesn't necessarily mean that they've perished. It's just that they get cold. Fish can handle a little bit of cold. You just got to warm them up slowly and they'll become more active along with it. It's definitely something that takes a lot of people by surprise the first time they see it. I remember the first time I saw Ray come in cold, and I thought it was a do way. But as long as you treat them correctly upon arrival, like I said, just warm them up slowly, they do bounce back from it just fine. They're actually surprisingly tolerant of that at times. It's actually beneficial just because it's less waste in the bag, so less ammonia, and really they can survive in the bag a little bit longer when they're kept a little cooler, as opposed to warmer, like 80 degrees where they're normally kept. So there are some benefits to shipping in the cooler months. You just don't want them getting too cold overall.
So you guys have been in business now for two years. Clearly it's a great success, but some of our listeners on the podcast most of our listeners on the podcast have little to no experience with stingrays. Quite interested, maybe they're thinking about it, but stingrays is an advanced level in aquarius hobby. It's going to take a few, how do we say, steps of trial and error to get good at the aquarius hobby before they're going to risk the amount of money it costs for a stingray to have in your tank. For the listeners, if you can walk us through number one, let's go with basic care. What do you want to see for some of your freshwater stingrays? For basic care and size of tanks.
I would say the first and most important thing is stability. That comes with a lot of fish in the hobby. But rays especially, it's key. They can tolerate a very wide variety of water parameters. I've even seen rays breed in a PH over eight before, so it can be done well, but you got to keep it stable. If you got your PH swinging everywhere, your temp swinging everywhere, that's when you're going to really have the issues. Even at our shop, we're on well water. Originally we had honestly, it got ugly when we first started, we had a PH right around eight. But apparently wells, I've learned, can swing throughout the year. It turned out to be heavy in co2 and once it gassed off, the PH did rise up above nine even. It was completely ridiculous. I will say don't try it with a PH of nine. We've since moved on to Ro water, which is it's made our lives so much easier. We can dial it in. You don't need this ro water, but as long as it's stable, the Ray is going to be happy. Anywhere from a PH of 6.5 up to really, I'd even say as high as eight. And then temps like 78 to we even keep some pups up in the upper eighty s, like eighty six or so.
So you do want to keep them a bit warmer than some of the tropical fish that you deal with.
Yeah, we found that rays definitely eat a lot better once they're kept a bit warmer. With pups, that's especially important. They're such active fish that they can burn off their body weight in no time at all. And then the little pups, they've just got no fat reserves on them and so with their activity levels they can go from being this fat little thing to skin and bones in no time at all. So it's important to keep them active, keep them eating well, and then just yeah, you want to keep them fed. And so the warmer temperatures definitely help keep up their appetite. So that definitely helps in that regard.
Now, on the sake of food, let's start with an infant pup. What do you begin to feed a fresh pup? Because again, the pup is not dithered to fish. Generally speaking, how do you feed and what do you feed the pups?
So it's really going to depend on the type, just because different types are born at different sizes, smaller rays like scobina. We actually had one born in a shipping bag being sent over to us. The mother was only ten inches across or so, so pretty small. Gave birth to this fully developed pup that was maybe two and a half, three inches across, something like that. It's got a tiny mouth, so you'll want to feed something like blood worms or even black worms to it, both. Those are great foods for newborn pups to really get going. That said, anyone selling their raise, they should be eating something a little more with substance than blood worms or black worms. We feed primarily at the shop. Little cubes of tilapia, shrimp, mussels, silver sides, really actual herdy pieces of fish meat or clam meat or really any seafood can be done. I've seen people feed salmon, I've seen people feed tuna. Those two are both a little more oily, so they can make a messier water. But really, if your Ray will eat it, there's just about no harm in feeding it as long as it's not dangerous for the tank.
So when I talk to anybody about stingrays that have had it and generally these are not the experts, because experts, they're clearly succeeding. But the majority that I see people like oh I got a stingray and I just couldn't get it to eat is the most common thing I hear. I've tried all this food, I've tried different methods, they won't eat it at all. I've tried for instance, like with my couple of pups with bloodworms, couldn't get them to eat them at all.
You know what the issue is? So many come in unhealthy. It was especially an issue when wild rays were prevalent. They would be held at these facilities in South America, starved for weeks at a time, shipped in filthy water and then they come in and don't want to eat. Getting one of those rays to eat is half the battle. If you can get it to eat then chances of it surviving are much higher. But getting it to do so is tough sometimes. That's why when you're buying your first ray or any ray in general looking for it, eating is one of the biggest things you want to do. If you're buying from a reputable breeder or a reputable seller it's not as much of a concern. But there are many people bringing in raise these days that they're just looking to make a quick buck. It's unfortunate but there's some very cheap rays to be had over in Thailand especially. They bring them over here, sell them for a bit of a profit and ship them back out before they've even settled into the holding tank. So you want to watch out for those kind of conditions just because those rays have had a lot of stress in a short amount of time and they may not be eating well. Being on frozen foods is one of the best things you can do as a new ray keeper is just looking for a seller who's got his rays eating those foods.
The issues that I'm having or had I should say is I had a beautiful blonde pearl stingray. I got it in. I cashed in a lot of favors with some wholesalers and I paid out the nose for it. I got it in and acclimated fine. I could not get it to eat black worms bloodworms. It came in, it was above standard pup size but it was still very young and I couldn't get it to eat anything that normally would. The textbooks would say feed it. And I tried to do some research I couldn't find anything because ray information is very sparse. It's not like oh there's discus people out there. Well stingray people are few and far between. They're getting more popular and prevalent but to be frank it's very niche hobby. And to find these quote unquote trade secrets it's kept under a veil almost. So I decided just to talk to biologists, talk about how they're in their wild areas and again they're bottom dwellers, they're digging, they're looking for critters in sand and dirt. So I decided to try again.
I.
Had a sand bottom. I decided to try. I have tuberflex forms and cubes. They were nice sized cubes, nice bite size for the stingray. And I would just take my tongs. I had 24 inch tongs to do this because, again, I'm not as brave as you are as an experienced stingray, you know, expert. And I was not about to lose my life putting my hand in the tank because I'm concerned about getting stabbed and all the goodies. I used tongs, buried the tubaflex worms, and it's like a light bulb went off. It would dig all over the bottom of the tank and find these two of flex worms, cubes and gobble them down.
Oh, that's awesome.
It was the best experience I had. It was like just instantly clearly I wasn't feeding them right. So it went from not eating at all to once I buried food and I started with tupa flux worms, it would gobble them up all over the tank. Well, I had a little cocktail shrimps that I would give them because again, it was growing big enough. And I buried those as well. gobbled them, gobble them outright. And apparently one of them had maybe a shell on it or something, and I literally watched it die, choking on it.
Wow, that is horrible.
So I don't know if you're not supposed to feed them shrimp. I tried to get ones that were not a lot of hard shell, and they're cocktail shrimp, so they shouldn't be bad. They weren't cooked. They were supposed to be raw. And I watched it get stuck in a skill and choked and died.
That is wild. That's a situation I've never actually experienced. I know some shrimp have little spikes on them. Do you know if it still had the spike on it?
I didn't see any. Again, these were food grade. I literally go to the grocery store. I purposely order raw cocktail shrimp just so they're nice and soft. It could have been I watch it get cut or stuck, and I didn't do a massive biopsy. I was just so depressed. And here's the funny thing. And Jimmy makes fun of me for this. I have a couple of different roommates, and the roommate's still with me. I'm sitting there looking at the tank. He's like, oh, cool. The singer is eating again. And I'm like, oh, no. What's happening? And he looks at me, looks at the stingray, like, what's going on? It's moving weird. I'm like, it's choking to death. We both stood there looking at my tank and my crazy expensive stingray. And then he leaned over and said, I just thought that's how you're going to go.
Oh, wow.
That's some cold stuff right there, man.
Wow.
Again, I learned something today. I know that if you buy a fish 101 is try to go to the pet store, your local pet store, and ask, hey, is it eating well? Could you put a little food in there just so I can see eat. If you're going to buy an expensive fish, if it's eating well, it generally shows a sign of health and to move on. But no one in my area sells stingrays and I've had encounters with selling stingrays to people in the past. I've had a couple of my own. They came in bad. So this was a reputable vendor. I got it in, it just wouldn't eat, buried it, it worked and moved on. But is there any tricks? Like for instance, betas? Right. You can take food and you can move the water tension, the surface water tension, and that's enough to trigger the natural response for predator tendencies. And it'll try to go eat the food. Is there any tricks of the trade to get stingrays to be encouraged to eat, movement or something?
That's a good question. It really depends. There's a few different things you can try. Like you said, you tried blackworms even. Usually that's kind of if nothing else works, black worms are typically a real safe bet that will spark the interest.
In food and of course live black worms. So they're watching something move?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you want those live ones. They've got more of a scent. Rays have a very good sense of smell. They'll pick out food from clear across the tank. It's wild to see, they notice it and seek it out. But another trick you can try is take night crawlers, chop them up real small soak a bunch of foods in the guts tilapia all the normals, and then try feeding that mixture to the rays. That can sometimes spark an interest.
I love night crawlers. Does the nightcrawler move?
What's that?
Is that scent? Or is the night crawlers, are they intended to move? What's the goal there?
Usually it's the scent you want really small, finely chopped up night crawlers. If they're big enough to be wiggling around still, you've probably left them too big. Especially if you're trying to feed a pup just because you want little maybe quarter to half inch segments of worm. So you want it just like a kind of a worm gut slurry almost. So it permeates the water once it's dumped in and really coats the food. That doesn't always work. However, sometimes it's just time. You can do all the tricks that there are, but some rays just decide that they're not going to be saved. We had a female albino when we were holding back with the hopes of breeding. At some point she was in with a bunch of our marbles and some of the marbles were mature. Well, they decided that, hey, we want to beat up on you, chew you up even though you're not ready to breed, we're going to take it out on you overnight. She just got the crap kicked out of her, was missing. I guess about a third of her disc was starting to curl up. Just looked awful. We didn't think she'd survive. Of course, she stopped eating, went, I want to say about three weeks without touching any food at all. And then just one day, suddenly, she apparently had the will to live and started pouncing on food again. So sometimes it's even just time you offer a little bit of food every day. Try not to stress them out with it, but just sometimes that act of making them know that, hey, there's food here if you want it can be enough to kind of jumpstart that interest again.
Are you saying stingrays are emotional?
They can be, yeah. They definitely show an intelligence that I have not seen with a lot of fish, something I definitely appreciate about larger fish especially. You can actually kind of see what's going on in their heads. They're not I wouldn't call them advanced thinkers, but you can kind of see what their intentions are. And rays are no different. They definitely recognize people. They recognize the people who feed them. They get excited when you come to the front of the tank. They'll come up and meet you, and even if you've got no food, they'll still get excited about it. They see you as the one who brings this food to them.
So they're like a dog.
Yeah. They're not going to start wagging their tail for you, but food wise, yes. I've definitely had some labs that are very similar in that food regard, so it's a neat response to see. And they are very curious, too. You stick your hand in the tank and it's not that they're a danger. Yeah, you need to be aware of the barb on their tail. It's really going to hurt if you get hit with it, but they're not aggressive with it. It's strictly defensive. So they'll come up, they'll swim against your hand. If they're comfortable with you, they'll try and take food away from you, for example. Hand feeding is definitely something that's possible with raise. It's something you want to do with caution, but they're smart enough to know, hey, this guy's giving me food. He's not trying to eat me or anything. I don't need to go and stab him in the wrist. So they're just very interactive. As far as fish go, it's a little more than some other fish I've had in the past that, hey, yeah, these look pretty, but it's about all I get out of it. Besides feeding with stingrays, they're a little more interactive. They show intelligence. To me, it's a whole different ball game.
So when you get a ray like that that gets severely beat up, I would imagine you take it and kind of quarantine on its own, correct?
Yeah, you definitely want to separate them out from the rest. A ray that's stressed is one that stops eating. They stop being nearly as active. If they've got to compete for food, then they're not going to do anywhere near as well. If other rays are aggressively eating around them. That's just going to further stress them. So if possible, yeah, you want to put up a divider. You want to put them in a separate tank. You should move the healthy ray if possible, as opposed to the sick one. Obviously not always possible, but yeah, you want to get them separated and kind of give it its own space so it doesn't have to worry about that.
So when you're separating it, I'm assuming you have a large enough tank. What dividers? You just use any dividers, whether it's some sort of netting, some screen plexiglass, turn on your local copy of offspring and listen to keep it separated.
I mean, hey, if it works, you've got a few different options. Something to keep in mind is rays are very strong and they've got some body weight behind them to break down a lot of dividers. The commonly seen dividers, what do you use at a pet store? Probably are going to be too flimsy to stop a large ray from getting to the other side.
What do you use?
We typically use the egg crate. Like, you see it in light fixtures. You pick it up at a hardware store, it comes in like 40 x 24 inch pieces. You see the reef guys using it as the fragrance.
It sounds like that certainly works for you. Again, I use a lot of egg crates in my tanks, especially sumps glass scratches. But my sumps, I don't care if it gets scratched, if I'm using a tank, if I'm using a rubber made tote even better, I fit those egg crates nice and tight so they fit against the walls so fish can't push them. I've had a catfish in my sump that was rescued and that was bopping around for a while and it couldn't push the egg crate. But again, stingrays have a lot they're all thin, they're all discs, so they have a lot of pushing power. Even joey, the King of diy, has videos. He started doing stingrays on his YouTube channel, and they pushed dividers over and beat up each other. He's like, oh, it happened in the middle of the night. They must have pushed it down. So be aware that there's a lot of even small stingrays have a lot of thin power. But let's talk a bit about breeding. Matt, the stingrays that you guys import in, again, almost exclusively, are South American stingrays, correct?
Yes. At this time there are Asian freshwater stingrays. It's not something we've gotten into. We've considered it, but it's just not a very big market. And they're a whole lot more sensitive than South American variety. So it's just not really a road we've quite been ready to go down yet.
Well, that and I hear that some of those asians are massive. I mean, that's where you get the one you get a river monsters. That's what, 800, £900?
Yeah. I mean, there's some south american ones that get big, but nothing quite like that. That's a whole different level of big.
So for the South American stingrays, how do commonly breeding happen? Do you instigate it? Is it a temperature thing? What's your secrets? Because clearly You've been breeding a few.
You know what? We've had a few successes breeding at our location. However, at the moment, Most are imported, so I can't take too much credit quite yet. Our guy in the Netherlands, Mark hou veneers, one of the biggest breeders in the world. He's pretty well known for his just high quality rays. At this point, he's had massive success. A lot of what it comes down to is just time. Rays are not fish that mature quickly. It depends on the species. But typically, two and a half years old is before they start showing breeding activity. Males a little sooner than females. It's just a matter of pairing them up. We've got a pair of snow leopards that they breed, no problem. The male, he's efficient. He's not one that beats up the female as he's getting the job done.
So if I can pause just for our beginner listeners that don't even know the process at all. I'm a novice to this. I've only clipped What I've seen on YouTube videos from a couple of different people that literally, quote, unquote, got lucky. There's a place in our Minnesota, one of our local pet stores, that has some stingrays on hand, and they have a pair that they've had for years that they just started breeding and have never, ever stopped. And that's where I got any insight that I've had for stingray breeding. So from start, the male starts nipping the fins. If you can just walk me Through The high level process of they start nipping after they nip. It's a curl. After the curl, how many weeks? That type of bouncing ball?
Yeah. When they're younger, it's a bit more of a long, drawn out process. Like I said, males typically mature sooner than females.
Are you saying virgin stingrays have a harder time figuring it out?
Yes, they most definitely do. The males have a bit tougher of a job. They got to get the female to swim up into the water column. So that they themselves can flip over and get one of their claspers in.
Whoa. That's how it works. See, again, this is novice, man. Yeah, it is. You know, the monkey and the symbols, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I'm thinking, like, both discs, bottom to bottom. Is that how this works, Jimmy?
Pretty much is, yeah.
You should see jimmy's face right now. The amount of face palm, jimmy didn't teach me about the birds and the bees, so I'm just monkey symbols now. Thank you.
Wow. Yeah, it's quite the process. Male really starts tugging on the back of the female's disc right by the base of her tail. Usually this whole time, the female is kind of whacking him in the face with her tail, depending on how annoyed she gets. Sometimes she even uses the barb. So males are in danger of being stung at this point. So he starts tugging on her, trying to get her to swim up into the water column, at which point he's got to be quick before she comes back down to the bottom and get himself up underneath her, upside down, and stick it in her at that point.
So the entire process is just they're biting her to get her to swim up so they can slip underneath.
Yeah, that's what it comes down to.
So if you have a couple of stingrays in your tank and they're beating up on each other, odds are that they could be starting something. That's how they're in the mood. They're into that rough stuff, you know what I mean?
It's definitely possible. Males can be kind of jerks once they get mature. They'll beat up on each other, they'll beat up on females whether they're mature or not and ready to breed. Mature males have been known to kill smaller females if they're not ready to breed. So that is something you do want to watch out for. Males can get a little aggressive. Most will breed with whatever they can get a hold of. And it's kind of a violent process. And so it can go from being perfectly fine to suddenly you've got a female clinging to life in the blink of an eye. It can happen overnight like it did with the albino I told you guys about.
Before Adam asks, I just want to clarify, Adam, they do not make tiny size wife beaters for stingrays. All right. Just want to clear that.
I was not going to ask that, actually. I've got a lot of high level questions.
Does some fit in this topic right now? You want to hit some? Yes, please.
Like three of them. Do you think that they form pare bonds?
I do not. They don't seem to be loyal. A male will go after any female he can get his fins after.
So they're like Jimmy around 18? Is that what you're saying? 1414, man.
Jimmy and females, they do have some say over it. If they're not ready, then they're not going to release the, I guess, pheromones, that signal that they're ready to a male and they're not going to give it up for them. We got a big female at our shop. She's, I want to say twelve years old at this point, over 2ft across. She's had several litters, but the last year and a half or so, she's just decided she's taking a break, kind of doing her own thing, finding herself. And we've tried several different males in with her. She don't need no way to tickle their fancy.
I just see this thing, right, getting in her convertible, driving down by the beach with the top down, wind blowing through her hair. What's that movie trying to find herself.
They embrace hands, drop off a cliff together. Is that what it is?
I don't know.
I do have another question about this.
Okay. It's all you.
I know, for some chameleon breeders, they actually use for virgin males that get really rambunctious aggressive. They use older females with their younger males, and the older females kind of like teach the males cougars, they teach them how to behave. Is that a thing that you've tried.
For stingrays or no, it's not something that we've tried yet. I could definitely see it being done, though. Some males are much better at breeding than others. Like our snow male, he's able to bite on, get her up in the water and get it in and back out in just a couple of minutes. Whereas another snow male of ours, he tried first. He was chasing around all day and couldn't get the job done. So being with a female who knows what she's doing, it's very possible that the male could get a better idea of what he's doing. I don't know for sure. It's something I'd love to see someone try, but I guess I don't have a solid answer for you on that one.
We'll do some research. Maybe we can talk to your wholesaler, get some insider scoop on some of his traits. But you got any more questions?
Adam yeah, I watched a YouTube video of this kid in Taiwan or Thailand or something, and he was like a number one stingray breeder over there. And they put all their males in these big shallow vats that are like 2ft high at the most. And what he did is he put a female that he somehow knew was receptive. It looked like she was more pink at the end.
Okay.
So he put her in with a whole group of males, I mean, a ton of males. And then he knew a storm was coming through, so he took the garden hose and he sprayed the water like it was raining, and that instantly triggered them. Have you ever seen any of that type of breeding behavior? To we were talking about some fish breeding where they'll check the see the barometric pressure, they feel it somehow and they breed that way. Have you ever noticed that with your stingrays or heard of that?
You know what?
We don't have enough pairs at the moment to, I guess, kind of run those types of experiments. We've only got a few mature pairs at this point. However, I have heard of people having success with breeding after or during storms, so it's not the first I've heard of that. It's definitely something that would be worth looking into if you've got a pair that's not quite making it happen. I have heard of cold water changes doing that as well. Even just a few degrees and temperature drop can be enough to kind of get them in the mood. So there's definitely some merit to that. As far as how much, I don't know. It seems like most stingrays if they're ready then they're going to do it regardless. They don't seem to need really too much help. I guess if you got a mature male and a mature female and she's not pregnant, chances are he's going to be chasing after as long as she's willing.
Well that's pretty common for a lot of other fish. Even jimmy's got stories of breeding angel fish and the angel fish 09:00 storms coming in that barometric pressure hitting all those tanks going off at once. But secretly we blame it on his playlist at 09:00 p.m. In his house. It's a whole lot of marvin Gay, Barry White, that type of stuff. What music choices do you guys use in your fish room?
I can't say that we've spoiled them on that kind of stuff too much. It's mostly some hard rock that they listen to so I guess it gets them kind of amped up and metallica sandman. Yeah some disturbed, that kind of stuff gets their head banging and I guess that seems to work.
Then the banging starts. That's great.
There you go.
Exactly.
So after the pair get the dirty deeds done dirt cheap done. How long is the gestation period on an average female?
You know what that actually completely depends on the race species. Some, like pearls materials are as quick as about 90 to 100 days. Others for example, are snow pair. Her last litter lasted about 120 days and then some. Others, like historic tend to last anywhere from about 150 to 180 days. So quite a while compared to some of the others.
So essentially you're not Amazon priming these things.
No, it's definitely not a quick process. You can watch these females grow by the day, especially in the later periods of their pregnancy. They get massive as they get closer.
To giving birth and so each different species is there a certain amount of pups that they have? I mean do some have more than others?
You get some variability with all of these but some definitely lean towards bigger litters. Pearls for example, they give birth quickly and they also tend to have much larger litters. It's not uncommon to see 1012 pups. Sometimes even more materials are the same way. I've seen I think the largest I've seen was 22 pups born out of one mother. She was enormous but just the bigger litters overall. Whereas historic with those really long pregnancy periods they tend to only give birth to one, two, maybe three pups at a time. So that's kind of why you see some of these rays in the hobby so much more like pearls. Even albinos is just because they breed so readily and then have such large litters breeders just can't move them quick enough. Whereas hysterics, one of the smaller really one of my favorite species, they're hard to find these days just because they take so long to produce and then, okay, here's two pups. Well, that's great, but it's kind of hard when you're trying to kind of make it. Spread them throughout the hobby, just like.
The zebra play goes. Not enough to go around for local breeders, but this is exactly all of these are live birth, is that correct?
Yes.
No egg layers, like sharks?
No, all live birth.
Now, quick question. Is there any parenting that the parents do or is after they are born? They're on their own?
They are completely on their own. It's actually wise to separate them or separate most people separate the mother as she's approaching her kind of due date. Especially the males are known to attack and kill these newborn pups. I don't think it's because they're pups. It's just because they're smaller and they're easy food. So they'll chew on them, discover this isn't that good, and then spit out the carcass, unfortunately. So, no, the parents are really, honestly terrible parents. They get spit out and jobs done, mom's on to find the next male.
So it's like driving by the trailer park. All right.
Exactly.
I get it.
Now that we covered breeding, you talked about water parameters, we talked about food choices for our pups, adults. Again, you say there's a plethora. Is there a certain way you cut them or size even for the big stingrays, you want them to at certain inches feed? I've seen, like, the blocks on different YouTube channels, about one inch bites. Is that what you want to kind of keep it at, or do you feed it bigger?
Yeah, you know, it it really depends on the size of the ray for like, a six, seven, eight inch stingray, which is across not account, not counting the tail or anything. Yeah, about a one inch cube or a one by two inch piece of tilapia or so. They can get down fairly large pieces. You don't want to overdo it because otherwise they struggle to eat and they'll decide, okay, this was too tough. I'm done eating for the night. So obviously not an ideal situation there, but yeah, about a one inch cube is a good place to start. One of the primary foods we feed is tilapia. You buy them in just the raw filets, and what we do is cut them into strips that are they're probably about a half inch wide or so, and then take those strips. And as we're feeding, going around each tank, we'll just cut off the end of each strip, get eight or 910 pieces off of each strip and just drop them right into the tank as we go. Stuff like shrimp, we always buy the headless, tails already peeled and devaned. Honestly, mostly because we're lazy, we spend a little bit more money to have it done for us instead of having to deal with getting rid of shrimp peels and shells and all that.
Well, I mean, do you pay for labor cutting fish food? Or do you buy it in and try to cut labor costs somewhere?
Exactly. Feeding everyone at the shop, it takes us about an hour to do a feeding to everyone, so it's not a quick process. And so, yeah, having to peel the shell off the shrimp and everything, it's not something either of us want to deal with. So kind of the same way with tilapia. Just take those for the smaller rays, we'll cut it into a few different pieces. We buy the really small ones, like the 75 to 90 count per pound. Yeah, just cut them up as we're feeding and drop them on in the tank. Larger rays will get whole pieces of shrimp. Some of the larger rays, the tilapia fillets those strips will cut the strip in two pieces instead of eight or nine. And drop those whole things and they can take it down, no problem. So as the ray gets bigger, you can feed, obviously, larger and larger pieces. And it's a much quicker process with the larger rays. Some of the really small pups. Yeah, you got to cut it tiny, little lower than eminem size. So you kind of watch the ray for how they're doing with the food. If they're just inhaling it okay, you can cut it a little bigger. If they're struggling, keep spitting the peaks out, repeatedly chewing on it, then. Okay, yeah, you want to cut it a little bit smaller for them on the next one. So just really with everything with rays, just kind of watch them. They're going to show you.
Don't let them choke on cocktail shrimp. Don't do it.
Yeah, exactly. So it might have been a little too big in that case.
Unfortunately, I'm not salty at all.
Have you guys tried the Rapashi Joe food?
We have not.
Okay.
How about massive?
Or we have fed massive ore. It's actually one of the staples at our place. Primarily, we do like, a round of pellets in the morning and then frozen in the evenings. Pellets are a whole lot quicker to feed. So the issue with pellets is, one, they make a huge messier tank. We have a lot of just kind of white display tanks. White is good for growing rays out and just it helps bigger whiter spots as they get older. But pellets, they turn all the walls brown. It's just not ideal. But they have a ton of calories in them. Some of the rays absolutely love them. So when possible, we do definitely feed pellets.
So some of the other special care pieces is number one. They're barb. Now, the biggest unknown misconception conception is do they have toxins, venom or none of the above?
You know what, that's kind of a debated topic. I think it kind of depends on who you ask. I'm sure there's some smarter people than I am. I might have an answer.
You mean you haven't died yet, have. You been stung?
I've never been stung. Brad managed to get hit. He got nailed last September. We were coming back from aqua shella long weekend, loading rays back into their tanks back at the shop and lifting one up into a top tank. It was in its bag still, but it was all worked up. This was just a very angry fish. It managed to nail his forearms through the bag and didn't get in very far, maybe a quarter of an inch. But he said it felt like his arm had been run over by a truck. This wound, like I said, it wasn't very deep, but it bled profusely for quite a while. And then he said it just ached for days afterwards. It finally took about a week before it started really not being as sore.
So the reason I asked this about the toxins again, because people get a lot of questions, people are concerned when they buy a fish, any pet that they have, is it venomous? Does it have toxins? What should be worried about? Do we not lick it like frogs?
Well, there's some frogs you can lick.
Right. And everything's different with each type of stingray species.
Frog liquor.
Frog liquor don't lick frogs, guys. Public Service Announcement freshwater stingrays, again, have toxins. They venom in some species, some only when they get older, some when they're young. And it's not necessarily like fangs, such as like a snake. It's mucus on the barb. So when you say that it bled profusely, that's anti globulence. That keep it from healing over the bleeding to stop clotting the clotting mechanism.
Anticoagulant.
Thank you.
Say that three times.
That's a good one. I mean, you've had six beers, Jimmy. You should be able to say that pretty well.
Anti coagulant.
See, that is brought to you by, you know, the golden light.
That's right.
Again, there's no anti venom for any of these, because when they find them in the Amazon, they're finding that they're a food source, where they're kept or if they're kept in captivity, that it's not necessarily all the same venom. And frankly, there's not a big outcry for people asking for anti venom when a lot of it doesn't kill people. Because clearly your friend got hit and he's around and that might not have been a venomous stingray.
Yeah.
Did he seek medical attention at all.
On that or be like Adam? And he did not wait for his left side to fall off and just try to sell face like this.
Adam has had some problems in the past, being hit by different things.
As far as I've seen, most of the South American varieties, you're going to have about the same reaction. No matter what type you get hit by, it's going to hurt, it might send you to the hospital, but as long as you're not getting hit, where you're going to either bleed out or in the chest or anything, you're going to survive it. Yeah.
Don't Steve irwin yourself.
Exactly.
Unfortunately, that's what happened to Steve irwin. Correct. Did he not get drunk directly right in through the heart?
He got hit in the heart, but then he pulled it out and it was over by that time. You leave stuff in, if it's going to you got to take it be rushed because they'll do it at the hospital. If you're going to hit through an organ or through a main vein, you just leave that stuff in there and let professionals take it out.
So when you get hit, does the barb stay inside of you or does it I would imagine it would be really hard.
Are you asking if it's a bee sting?
No, I'm asking if you get something like, unfortunately, Steve irwin passed away from.
This where it broke off.
I mean, did it break off or I mean, would you have to go in with this thing flopping off of your chest?
The barbs will they can release and stay inside of you. The barbs themselves are serrated backwards, so as you pull it out, it just digs into your skin deeper. Okay.
Makes total sense.
Yeah. If the rate gets it in you deep enough, then it's going to stay in. They're going to jerk it off their tail and it's staying in you until you go to the hospital and get it removed. In brad's case, it just wasn't in very far. It was on the smooth point of it and it was a little more than a pinprick, but same kind of idea with it. So, yeah, it's entirely possible to get it stuck in your hand, your wrist. If it's bad enough, it can require surgery to remove. There was a gentleman I knew of this was back when I was getting started. His ray got him in the hand between the thumb and his pointer finger, and the barb didn't release. So he has this several pound fish trying to swim away and he can't get it off his hand. It messed up his hand for several years afterwards. Just it did some nerve damage, some ligament damage, and they had to do surgery to remove little fragments of stingray barb, which is a concern because of the bacteria on it. So you can't just leave that in there. So they have the potential to mess you up pretty good, even if they won't kill you. It's not ideal, but I have heard some people have reactions similar to, like, a severe bee sting. So if you're allergic to bees or wasps, it's something additional to watch out for. You can have the advanced reaction to it, but otherwise, like I said, it's going to hurt. You're really going to wish that it didn't happen. But as long as the barb didn't stay in you, chances are you just need to run it under some very hot water and pray for a week to pass quickly.
At what point do they grow a little stinger.
Yeah, they are born with one.
How painful. In childbirth, I came out backwards. I can only imagine.
Yeah. I don't think the stingray mother would appreciate tail first. I have heard that the barbs at that point are soft. I don't know how true that is. It seems silly to me, but maybe it's the case. I'm not going to be brave enough to reach in there and find out.
I'm sure it's very similar to a porcupine.
Yeah, theirs are nice and soft as well.
Yeah, it's definitely possible. But yeah, they're born with a barb. That first one is shed fairly quickly after two or three months.
Do adults shed grows in?
They all shed their barbs. Adults shed them a whole lot less frequently just because it's a lot like snakes. As they grow, they shed their skin. Same idea with stingrays. As they grow and get bigger, they grow in new barbs that are larger and the old one just falls off.
So you must have a collection of sweet barbs you're selling on your website, chicago Stingrays.com.
We do have a few barbs, none for sale at the moment. Our collection is not quite that big yet.
Damn.
But we do have some cool ones. We got in some big raids recently that sometimes when they're shipped, they have airlines over the barbs just to keep them from puncturing bags. So we had a bar fall off recently that had a piece of airline on it. I thought that was kind of neat. Maybe it's simple things in life pleasing me, but yeah, it's kind of cool having that collection. Kind of an additional bonus to stingrays.
What's the largest rays that you bring in? I mean, how many rays can you get in the box? How big is the box? How many rays can you get in?
No, you can have raised Jimmy.
I'm going to get some.
Most we get in are the little pumps, the four, five, sometimes six inches.
Okay.
And they get actually packed in there pretty good. Most of the boxes are somewhere around 24 x 18 x 18. So decent size styrofoam boxes. Some of those boxes we've had twelve or 14 rates wedged into quite a few. Apparently they've got some new packing method in Thailand that actually they vacuum seal the bags. I'm kind of anxious to see that. We've got an import coming tomorrow with some in it, but because of the way they do it, they can actually wedge even more into a box. Save on shipping that way.
Yeah, as a trans shipper, as an importer, it's all about how many can you stuff in a box because it's so dang expensive to bring the stuff in. Are they individually bagging stingrays, like one per bag, or are they putting multiple in a bag?
It depends who it's coming from. Some breeders, they do send them with seven or eight rays in one bag. Others, like this thailand shipment, they're all going to be individually bagged. Apparently.
I found several people that I buy discus from and what I really like is when they individually bag the discus because if you have one discus crap out on you, it doesn't skunk up the whole bag for the other six or seven to die. So I really enjoy the different shippers. That ship just one per small bag just in case you have one that passes away or else if a bag goes flat what I'm saying, flat, I mean gets a hole in it and all the water drains out and stuff. So I just think it's so much simpler and easier if you can get one fish per bag and it just hedges your bets. I'd rather lose one fish and lose seven fish.
Yeah, I definitely can understand that. I think that also ties into the importance of selecting your shippers. Well, knock on wood. All of our shippers have done a fantastic job shipping over rays. We've never actually lost any in the shipping process, which is impressive considering Thailand shipments are a close to 48 hours transit time. So that's a long time to be in a bag. But it's kind of one of those you start with healthy fish and you're going to get healthy fish out of it. It really does make a difference on who you buy from both internationally and domestic. So that's definitely something we've kind of started with and stuck with just because it's been working great for us.
So the next thing is tank space. The biggest thing that people do is they decide that a gallon requirement is going to work for them. So a 55 gallon or 200 gallon aquarium will work when generally they're the same width but maybe they're just taller and longer. So what dimensions do you recommend for stingrays and what is probably the smaller varieties of stingrays for those that want to think about the best way to get started with stingrays?
Sure. So I started with a 55 gallon with that very first stingray and it was clearly too small for it. Even the smallest of stingrays are very active and I don't think I'd want to start with anything if I could. I'd recommend every new stingray person start with something like one of the 120 gallon, four x two x two S. Those are nice and wide. They're not enormous tanks but it gives the race some place to grow some time to kind of figure out what you're doing. But it's not so much space that it makes it hard to feed some of the smaller rays when they're being temperamental, not wanting to feed. I have put them in as small as like a 40 breeder. You've really got to be on top of what you're doing though. It's not something I can necessarily recommend for someone just getting into rays.
And that's what you're not keeping long term either. You're keeping that for just a holding tank before it moves on to the next place. It's not going to be there very long. So long term is really what we're going after. To have a complete perfect place that's suitable enough for a single stingray generally is measured by length, not depth.
Correct.
What would you recommend for?
Length and width are key.
I guess the best thing to start with is what is two of the smaller varieties we keep hearing about a teacup stingray. Tell us about the small varieties.
So a teacup ray is actually a made up name in the hobby. It is array that typically imported from the wild. It's generally given to reticulated stingrays and it's a name used by fish stores that don't know what they're looking at. So it's just kind of okay, here's a teacup ray. It's little and they've kind of kept the misconception that they stay little and unfortunately that's just not true. Most of these so called teacups, they come in unhealthy, not eating, they just don't do well. So anyone offering you a teacup, unfortunately they don't really know what they're offering. It's a ray you want to stay away from. Rays you want to aim for. Reticulated are often cited as a good beginner ray. I can't say that I'd recommend them. They are one of the smaller growing species. However, something to keep in mind is all stingrays get big. Compared to your average fish. Stingrays are large.
What's the average size? Adult.
Well okay, so black diamonds are one of the more popular species. I've seen females pushing 30, 36 inches across. So absolutely enormous.
The ray itself is going to be 3ft, let's say two and a half feet. For something abnormally smaller, you can find a small breed of what's the footage that you would want to see? Like a square maybe measured six x six? Or is it like a seven x seven?
If you can get that, that would be amazing. But unfortunately, being realistic, most people are never going to be able to fit something like that in their house.
Well, most people are never going to afford a stingray.
Well, that's a fair point.
This is a unique, unique proposition. But for best health, what's your minimum requirements?
So if you go with one of the smaller rays such as a hysterics or a scobina, those two tend to top out right around twelve inches across, maybe 14 for some of the larger individuals. And that takes a long time. Those two rays would last in 180 gallons. So just a six x two x two for a very long time. You're talking several years and eventually they would be fine in something say eight x three. That's a big fish tank. But when it comes to talking about tank size for rays, that's not too unmanageable for some of the larger growing rays, the pearls and black diamonds a lot of people are fond of a 480 gallon tank, eight foot long, four foot wide and two foot tall. Some more space would be nice. However, a pair of black diamonds in a tank that size, they're going to be comfortable for many, many years. One of the nice things about all this captive breeding is we're seeing a trend of these rays breeding smaller and smaller and it kind of makes sense. It's in captivity, these rays that are massive, before they start breeding, they're going to be fewer and fewer but to find them, whereas the smaller ones, they're the more likely ones to breed and pass on their genes. So as a whole, it just seems like they're all getting a little bit smaller and so it's making it a little bit more manageable to keep some of these rays. I mean, don't get me wrong, they're still massive, but it's a little more manageable than it was 15 years ago when these were all wild caught.
What I'm seeing is a trend with these monster fish keepers, especially ray keepers, and I don't know if this is true with you is people are buying shallow pools, the small pools, the prop up pools that you can get. Number one, it's very durable. A lot of times already has some sort of pump system that you can retrofit into a sump and they're cheap and you can put gravel on the bottom of them. There's no sharp edges and a lot of people that's what I see using them for rays for beginner systems. Do you recommend that or something different?
You know, I'm not fond of ponds for especially smaller rays. It does work for some people. However, it's harder to keep an eye on how they're doing. All you can see is from the top. It's hard to really get a feel if they're eating well, if they're breathing heavily now, it's doable.
It's just especially as just be aware of the visibility.
Yeah, it's got limitations. And as someone who may be new to stingrays, it may not be the best course of action until you have a little more experience. I mean, I can't knock the pond idea too hard. For a while I had a 1200 gallon pond in my basement. So they work. It's just you got to keep in mind the specialized requirements to make them work. Yeah, if you're looking for a lot of space for fairly inexpensive, just make sure you got one that's not going to pop if the ray pokes it with its tail so you don't need several hundred gallons of water on your floor.
Let's talk about prices now. Do you guys sell stingrays directly from your website or our retail or do you wholesale the pet stores?
So our website is a mess right now. We are currently renovating our website. Once it's complete, it will have, I guess, a shopping cart feature on our site. For the longest time we felt that stingrays were one of those fish that you should have a conversation with the person buying it prior to them buying it. Just it is a specialized fish. They're sensitive, it's a lot of money. We just wanted to know who they were going to we kind of tried out ebay a little bit and found that if people needed more information or wanted more information, they'd reach out. And so we've kind of grown from that mindset to, yeah, we'll add a cart, but we'll make it easy to reach us if you have any questions or looking for something specific. So, yeah, at the moment, our website, it needs work. We've got some contact details on there.
So you do sell a retail, but you want to have that conversation until the website is fixed?
Exactly. Right now, Facebook and Instagram are the best places to reach us.
Let's talk about some prices, because just to give people that have never looked at stingrays, maybe their local pet stores never carried them. What are some of the ranges from, say, some of the cheapest stingrays you sell to the most expensive.
So stingrays are one of those fish that if you name a budget, I can just about find you a race for it.
$1 million.
I have $35, a pack of gum and some lint.
Yeah, I mean, for that, I could find you a wild teacup or a tick. It's not going to be healthy and it might die as soon as it arrives, but I can do it.
Hey, as long as you take our money, it's good lint, man.
Million dollars might be excessive, but I have seen some sell for north of $250,000.
What have you sold? Come on. Now, wait a minute. What's the most expensive you sold 250,000?
Most expensive we've sold was it was a bit over 15,000 black diamond. I'm assuming it was a pure super white, which is a yeah, it's a hybrid of rays. However, the person who created this super white line, they bred it for repeatable results. So you breed two super white crosses or two super whites, and you're going to get what looks like another super white. Whereas most hybrids, you breed them together and you have no idea what you're going to get. So they're unique in that regard, but this one was beautiful. It was quite the fish.
So let's go somewhere in the middle. Let's talk about, like, rob's trying to do his luck and kill another stingray. He wants a historic stingray. And what's that going to set me back for you to have to put me on a waiting list? Clearly, once I get through that waiting.
List, they're tough to get just because of the low breeding numbers. And historic are also banned from export from the wild, and so we can't even plump up the breeding population, so we're stuck with the limited numbers. So 15 years ago, I could have sold your historic for $200. Now it's hard to get one. We just sold a few of them for, let's say they went for $700. So prices have gone up a little bit on them. Now. If you're a person who really loves historic, you know that they're worth it.
I'm not a person that likes to have smaller fish. I don't have to have a three to four foot stingray in my home to deal with.
Yeah, that definitely helps. Makes life a little bit easier. Another common one in that case is Scobina. They stay smaller, even smaller than historic, actually. Or another one small litters. Very few people breeding them and so they're hard to get. The last group, we were selling them for 850 a piece. So unfortunately the two smaller guys, which are really they're great for smaller tanks, but truth be told, they're not great for your wallet kind of beginner raykeepers. Just one because of price, no person wants to spend that kind of money for a first stingray. Some people do, but I can't necessarily say that I'd recommend doing so. In that case, you may want to aim more towards a lot of the hybrids are a bit cheaper. We had some hybrids recently in the 350 range. We're working on some more that should be here soon. That will be probably the 250 to 300 plus range. And even can go back to kind of the wild routes. Go with like a wild mature. We had some of those and they were $200. So really that's kind of your intro pricing, really. Plan to spend about $200. Rather start at $200. Plan to spend upwards from there, really, depending on what you're looking for. But that will get you a good, healthy ray that you're not going to have issues getting it to eat. It's going to be active, it's going to be healthy. Obviously all this depends on who you're buying it from, but that's a safe place to start budgeting.
So when you guys bring these stingrays in, how long do you sit on them? Until you make them available to the public to purchase.
So that depends on who we imported from. Our big breeder, Mark over in amsterdam, he runs a tight ship over there. His fish are all very healthy. So it's not usually much of a concern about medical issues. But we do like to keep them for several weeks, usually three or four weeks. We observe them for any signs of medical issues because it does happen, but it's just you want to watch out for it, stay on top of it. And then it's always good to let them fully settle in, get comfortable eating nice fat bellies on them before you go and turn around and ship them back out. As I mentioned earlier, so many people are bringing in these fish and stingrays in particular and selling them right out of the shipping box. You can see them drip, acclimating them in the videos, in the pictures. And this fish hasn't even seen a fish tank in the United States yet and that's just not right to me. You never know what's going on with that ray. It may not eat, it may have parasites, it may have a bacterial infection. Until you watch it a couple of weeks, see it eat, make sure it's acting normal, breathing normal, no signs of redness or irritation or disc curling. Sorry, what's that?
Or disc curling.
Exactly. Disc curling. If you get to that stage, then you're really in trouble. I really don't like seeing people selling like that. And so, yeah, the ones we really trust, three, four weeks minimum. Stuff like the wild order we've done in the past. None of those rays left our facility earlier than I want to say was eight weeks. We ran them through several courses of several medications, got them all eating frozen foods nice and fat. So yeah, like I said, it depends on who they're coming from. But you're not going to see anything leave sooner than three weeks from us.
Well, that's incredible and that's the right way to do it. Quick question for you. Have you ever had the opportunity to go over to the Netherlands and see.
Ground Zero and have a stroop and waffle?
I did not have one of those.
You need a stroop and waffle.
A what?
A soup and waffle.
What's that?
These little cookies that they have from the Netherlands. A lot of business meetings, a lot of these hipster new startup companies give them away as gifts, like tech companies. But they look like little waffles. They're little cookies that they're perfect size to fit on top of your coffee cup and they got like caramel and chocolate in the middle. So what the idea is you take it, you put it on your hot cup of coffee, it warms the caramel inside the soup and waffle, and then you just eat little cookie as you drink your coffee. It's wonderful.
Wow, I missed out.
Oh yeah. That's seriously like the best thing since sliced bread.
Looking at yellow and marker, apparently. Exactly.
So when you went over to the Netherlands, how long did you spend over there?
We've actually gone over twice now. We went over once last March and then again in December. Both times have kind of been whirlwind trips. The first one we flew out on a Thursday, so arrived Friday morning and then we flew home on Sunday. So just two nights there. And then this last time was three nights, so a little bit longer. But it's really to go and see Mark, see his farm, talk business and kind of, I guess, game plan for the future. And, yeah, there was some touristy stuff, seeing amsterdam and seeing the sites, but a lot of it was wanting to see his farm, wanting to see his breeders and kind of learning his secrets on how he does it. He's obviously had great success. We felt there was a lot that we could learn from him. And so kind of go over, take some notes, take some pictures, see what we can do to improve our facility, to kind of replicate that. And it's still definitely A work in progress. But mark has been a great help. He's definitely kind of been there for us. He's helped us with any issues we've had. And kind of been a great mentor towards us. Between us, brad and I have several years worth of experience with ray's. But there's always more to be learned, more issues. It's never stop learning in this hobby. And with ray's especially, I found that to be the case. And mark's been breeding with them longer than I've even been in the hobby. And so it's great just kind of him taking us under his wing. And really showing us what's been working so well.
Awesome.
Yeah, I've been really lucky in that regard.
Well, adam, is there any other questions you have, buddy?
Well, I just had a couple. Have you ever fixed a stingray once it started death curl, or once it had done?
It is possible. However, it's one of those things. It really seems to kind of depend on the ray in question. Like I mentioned earlier, if a ray has gone off feeding, sometimes it just comes down to them deciding that they want to live still. Same kind of deal seems to be the case. With the death curl. There's a lot of things you can try and do to bring them back from that. Raising the temperature, keeping the tank dark, some salt, keeping them separated. But unfortunately, I'd say at least 95% of the time. If they've actually started fully curling, it's not going to end well, unfortunately.
You were saying how smart your rays were. And raised are very smart. Have you ever tried giving them things for enrichment?
Like a nintendo?
No, not like a nintendo, but like toys to play with, that type of stuff. Like to keep them from being, I don't know, bored.
Legos.
There you go.
We have actually done Some stuff like that. You know, the kong dog toys.
Okay.
They are great for putting pieces of food into. Because they sink, and then the ray tries to get the food out of them. It's wild just dropping one piece of food into a tank. And trying to see them. Or them all trying to figure out where it's gone. They get so worked up, and so as soon as they figure out it's in this cong toy, they're all over it. They're blown it around the tank. They're pushing it up walls. They're trying to suck it out the end of it. So we have done activities like that with them. Sometimes even just rocks in the tank. Some rays will push a rock around the tank all day. It's not great for your glass and acrylic, it scratches it up. But really, if there's anything in the tank, the rays going to. Move it wherever they want it. No matter how big that piece of driftwood is, if they want it somewhere else, they're going to figure out how to make it happen.
So you play a sadistic game of hide and seek. How could you?
Yeah, pretty much. It's fun to watch. They get very worked up over it, but it definitely gives them something to do.
It's kind of like Robbie at a buffet.
Yes. Where the hell did they put the fried chicken? Don't know. They're moving every time Robbie just goes.
Through the buffet and mows it down.
That's right.
Hey, I leave salad for you, Adam.
And then they go, you had enough. You go now.
I give you enough msg to kill elephant.
You go now.
All right. Well, Matt, is there anything else that you think we're missing in the concoction? The only thing I can think of is to let people know that stingrays have an incredible bioload. This I can say from experience. If you've had a fish like a goldfish or an Oscar that you think is a shit factory, trust me, stingrays are that and more. They eat a ton, as you said, they burn fat because they continually move all the time. They crap like a monster.
They do. It will amaze you how much they eat and then in turn, how much they crap out. You need to be up to par with your filtration, because if you're not, you're going to have issues.
There's no such thing as a fully planted tank and no filter.
With a stingray, your plants are going to be shredded. Unfortunately, in that case, like I said, raisal, they'll go wherever they want to go. They will move whatever they want to move. We've had a couple of people reach out with just these beautiful planted tanks, like professionally aquascape, wanting to add a stingray to it. It's like, dude, you got dirt underneath your sand. That's not a good combination. So, yeah, you really need to stay on top of filtration. sumps are ideal. Canisters can work. I'm not a huge fan just because they're kind of a pain in the ass. To keep clean. They just collect all the crap for months at a time and then just.
Kind of they don't handle as much flow as you're used to, and you're doing big tanks. So to have a canister shelter that fills your 1200 gallon VAT is pretty difficult. You can do that for a 300 gallon. You can do it for even, like, 455. When you get to those sizes, there's nothing that beats a sump. I'm running a rack. It's 910 gallon tanks. You know, not near as much as that, but a sump does that better than a canister ever could.
Exactly. You can customize a sump to exactly what you need. If you need more bio, it's okay. Add some more bioballs. If you need more mechanical well, add an extra sock or two into it. If you want to add a uv sterilizer, okay. Just drop a pump in the sump and have it returned right by the return intake. It's just so much easier to plan a solid filtration system with a sump than it is anything else. Like I said, canisters will work. Personally, I want to spend more time enjoying the hobby, enjoying the rays than I do doing maintenance. And canisters don't really allow that. They're something that actually takes a lot of time to clean, whereas a well thought out sump system shouldn't need that. You pull out some socks, you replace them, throw the dirty ones in a washer, and away you go.
Versus grabbing a canister, popping three trays, spraying each piece off, laying a new quilt, batting, and then screaming while you sip your beer.
Yeah, exactly. It doesn't help me with my laziness when it comes to doing that. Water changes are enough as it is. I don't want to have to be sticking my hand into this crap filled bucket of a canister filter. I would do it. I still have some canisters running on some tanks, but it's just not your ideal filtration for a fish that's putting out so much waste.
Jimmy and I are going to do a podcast, uncovering how to build the perfect sump and the lazy sump. Right, Jimmy? Well, thanks again, Matt. We appreciate the podcast. We appreciate all the information on Stingrays for those that are listening. If you want to start getting into Stingrays, certainly can you contact these guys directly? It is Chicago stingrays.com. Otherwise you can find them on their social medias, on Facebook and Instagram. Much better to message them directly. They are willing to help you personally to set up your system and tell them that Jimmy sent you. That way they can charge you 20% more. Exactly.
Of course.
Right.
Why wouldn't you?
Well, anything else that we missed there, Matt?
I think we've covered the vast majority of it. They're addicting. You buy one and suddenly you're going to want 15 more. So keep that in mind. But it's a fantastic step in the hobby if you're looking for something a little more advanced, a little different. I can't tell you how many women I've impressed saying, I've got Stingrays and they still disappear.
Ten minutes. That's the marketing.
Five minutes. Like I'm a God.
There you are. The beard wonder says, Step up and see my stingray.
Well, since Joe Exotic is in jail, you got to be the next best thing. You know what I mean?
Those are some big shoes to fill. But we'll get there.
You'll get there one stingray at a.
Time, because that Carol Basketball feeding the tigers.
Ducks on that one. Settle down at ducks on that one. Well, guys, go to aquariumgyspodcast.com if you like what you heard and you want to support us. Number one, support our sponsors, support Chicago Stingray to keep these great hobbies rolling. And you can support us from the bottom of the page. We have a donate link. It's one time donation month to month to help support the podcast and share this with a friend. That's really what supports the podcast is getting the word of word of mouth out. All podcasts listen. Have dunked 50% or more. Don't forget about us just because you're not driving to work. Listen at home. Tell your smart speaker to play the aquarium Guys podcast and we'll see you on the next episode.
Guys.
You got anything else, Matt?
I think I'm good. Thanks for having me.
No problem. Podcast out.
See you.
Thanks guys, for listening to this podcast. Please visit us@aquariumguyspodcast.com and listen to us on spotify iHeartRadio itunes and anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
We're practically everywhere. We're on Google. I mean, just go to your favorite place, Pocket casts subscribe to make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying in asleep.
Can I listen to it in my tree house?
In your tree house, in your fish room. Even alone at work.
What about my man cave?
Especially your man cave. Yeah, only if adam's there no with feeder guppy.
No, they're in lurks.
You magic loving Frank. fucking mother Frank.
Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later. bye.