Your firts ray

Before you buy your first ray, and pay a lot of money for a new specimen, there are some things you must know.  These points aren't a guarantee for success, but they will increase your chance of buying a healthy ray.

The first thing, you must have perfect water quality.  How you can achieve this you can read in the chapter In the tank.
 

Second, a healthy ray is always hungry.  Ask the owner of the ray to throw some food in the tank.  A healthy ray will immediately start to eat.  It doesn't have to be so exaggerated as the Leopoldi in the picture above (this smelt is much to big for her) but it is the idea that counts.  I must emphasize, that the above described behavior is not common amongst some species like P. Menchacia and the P. Schroederai, as they are much less aggressive feeders than Motoro's, Leopoldi's and Henlei's.  But also P. Schroederai and the P. Menchacai should not be your first ray.

Honestly people, it starts and ends with eating.  A lot of rays are difficult to get to eat when newly introduced.  However, when they already took food in the store, often within one day they will start eating in your tank.  And when they eat you can start powerfeeding to get some flesh on their bones (cartilage).  Because most of the time the little rays imported from Brazil are very skinny in contrary to the ones imported from Peru and Colombia, which have more flesh on their bones.

In the first picture above you can clearly see the big dent between the eyes.  Especially when you are a beginner in the ray hobby do not buy such an animal, as you will be very disappointed.  You also can see on the first picture, the hip bones almost sticking through the skin.  These are all signs that the ray is in  a very poor condition.  In the middle picture and the picture below you can see what is generally known as "running spots".  It seems that the spots slide off the animal but tells you something of its history.
 

The animal above did not make it, he died within an hour.  They go into the "death curl" and that is almost always the end.  And let me assure you that it is the worst thing a ray owner can experience, or any animal owner for that matter.

 

The third point, a healthy ray lies with his disk flat on the bottom.  If this is not the case, it could be they have a bacterial or fungal infection on the bottom of the disk.  It shows a red belly and lifts constantly the disk edge.  They don't like to lie on the bottom as it irritates them.  The lifting of the disk edge can also be the current in the tank, so beware.

Generally speaking an adult ray is stronger as they have more reserves.  They store their food reserves in the base of their tail.  So when you see a ray with a nice fat tail you know he can do without food for a few days or even weeks.  This is the advantage you have when buying an adult ray.

The 2 Pearl rays shown in the above pictures are newly imported specimens (that's why the water is cloudy).  You can clearly see that these animals have some food reserves in their tail.  So when these animals do not eat food when they are in their new tank, it won't e such a problem as when a young ray refuses to eat.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Up

Another thing regularily seen with freshly imported stingray is louse (look at the picture, If someone knows the English word for these let me know please).  I've seen many new arrivals with these little parasites ( that's why all my fresh animals go in quarantine before they go in the main tank).  It is easily removed with a piece of toilet paper or with a pair of tweezers.  I recommend the tweezers.  The picture below shows a louse.

Another thing, how you determine a male and female stingray.  A male has 2 so called claspers on the bottom side of the disk.  These claspers are the sexual genitals of the male, and must be fully developed when they start breeding.  With small rays the only way to see the difference is from underneath, with a big adult ray you can see the difference from above.  The left picture shows an adult male and the right picture shows a female.