so i just got a call uh from jeff the owner of my local fish store one fish
two fish and dirt with no scope but he calls me and says there's something wrong with the
raise my employees just gave me a call it said that there's something stuck in its mouth or
its gills they don't know what it is can you give the store a call us i give them a call
hi is jacob there just one second sure hello hey what's up jacob jeff told me give you a
call something about the stingray yeah um so i was told by the staff here i just got here
trying to see what they're talking about but there's something in the mouth i guess
and it's stuck in there which one is it
looks like what it kind of looks like
it's like the shape of a zip tie and it's sticking out from underneath him
out of his uh i wonder if it's uh one of the barbs
i could text you a picture yeah send me a picture all right i just texted your picture it wouldn't
be those oh boy that's a burb yeah it stabbed them that's why you gotta remove them from the tank
i'll come down down in the bottom yeah it's not gonna be pretty but i don't know how to deal
yeah jeff called me uh so i'll be there in about an hour and a half
okay sounds good no obviously there are some concerns uh with this we have a couple of options
because the barb is made out of a hardened cartilage once in water uh it'll essentially
dissolve over time and that can take months to happen i don't know how long this has been in the
ray but i'm assuming it's only been a day or two so it's probably fresh off another ray and stabbed
him if we were to wait maybe if this lodges and falls out over time odds are that's not going to
happen if we leave it in there and that ray gets scared or you know swims over something or maybe
that barb gets you know jammed up even further it goes through its brain it it punctures an organ
of some sort and just simply kills it so we have to you know we have to calculate the risk here do
we wait to see what happens or do i intervene and we net the ray and manually remove it but
in doing so we also run the risk of stabbing that sting that barb even further into the stingray
in my opinion the calculated risk here and what we're going to do is manually remove it i think
we have a higher chance of saving the stingray by manually taking it out versus leaving it in
there and seeing what happens because ultimately odds of it falling out are pretty slim secondary
infections stabbing it even further the fish stops eating um you know becomes lethargic
listless you know lord knows what could happen there but my heart is
saying go do something joey you you know what you're doing you can do this go do it flyers
just wouldn't bought all this stuff little pairs of gloves just protect yourself from
the tail it won't protect from the bar but it will protect from the tail in my neck
and everybody in this tank is huge now where do you get these front toes up see that's how big
mine are going to get this in here oh man that's on the big one oh no oh she's getting skinny
you start seeing her hip bones this isn't good
the big male's got a barb stuck underneath of him it's stabbed into them so if we don't remove it
which one you're looking at the big one oh yeah see oh oh yes there's a spike yeah yeah so one
of the barbs oh it's one of his own because look at the female she has a full barb they
should always have two but he looks like he just lost his where's the black diamond or the leopard
yeah so if we leave it in there is he eating it though no that's stabbed oh it looks like it's
gonna come out yeah he probably tried to eat it and it got stabbed in there
that's why substrate's a bad idea with stingrays
yeah so the game plan of course scoop him out get him on the table put him upside down and pull the
barbell if he makes it to the table i might not even have to will this work i'll clean it out
really good but will this work i think i'd be able to do this alone am i out of your shot down here
oh it won't matter i'll edit stuff out put a big blur on you don't blow up unless you don't care
oh it will be really easy yeah just in case
uh as soon as he comes out he's gonna do this and he's gonna try to stab him
so that garb there if we put him upside down i'm sure you might have heard this
before like when it comes to like sharks if you put a shark upside down yeah yeah yeah
yeah they don't know why but same with uh stingray will have the same thing will
happen now what i'm hoping is i might be able to get everything done within the net
but basically just yanking it out and hoping it comes out completely
do you want to get him to hurry up i don't want to yeah i want him to stay here
i can get him out easily right here
you could be like right here i guess and when the cart's here it's gonna go right there
yeah see it's right there i feel like i could just
now worst case scenario is that i push it even further
and it pierces like a vital organ that's gonna be fine just like this i gotta get them now
there he comes no i might be able to get it right here ah no shoot
very big fella
see it poking out there i might i might not even have to take him out of
here now
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so it's intact it's intact and that's the most important thing
i think he healed completely but when jeff brought this guy in he was um he was for another customer
that never came to get him and jeff doesn't have a ton of experience with freshwater stingray so
he's like do you want to consider taking this guy and i was like you know i really
don't want another stingray but once i saw him he was uh he was heater burned he was lethargic
he was starving to death he was skin and bones um so i took him and then jeff brought in another one
and just gave that one to me and he's like throw these guys out and when i get a big enough tank
i'll take them back so that's all that happened so i grew them out nursed them back to health
and uh they're doing really well but you can see his hip bones in the back and
just because he's big doesn't mean he's healthy so he's losing weight
but it happens almost damn near overnight this one looks a lot better so at the base of their
body right where the tail uh connects and believe it or not these are pectoral fins
um they're just modified but at the base you'll notice two little um you'll know you'll know their
hip bones when you see them so that's one sign and then in between their eyes there should never
be much of a dent it's always going to swoop in and stuff but it shouldn't be like a big dent and
he's starting to get one so a week of good food and he'll be fine so mastermore pellets and uh
what was the other thing shrimp they'll eat uh damn near anything seafood uh you
just gotta make sure he's getting it down the bottom you might even want to here's
a tip i'll show you what i'll do what i do when i when i had a community tank full of
rays and one won't eat or they're not getting the food i'll show you and it's right over here
you take this off and you just have the tube this isn't long enough i think he's got another
long one but you put it in and you drop the food down and you can direct where it gets to the base
so the ray is definitely going to get that food and now more than ever he needs it
because he's got to heal it's not that big of a problem um but i i bet you he'll eat right now
yeah because he probably wasn't able to eat previously yeah
i'm going to toss this in the car and then i want to shop
so that was best case scenario didn't have to remove the ray from the tank the fire was still
intact and it wasn't that deep maybe about an inch if it went in which sounds like a lot but
the barb itself was like almost four inches long the downside is it's one of his barbs that barb
was too big to be that that leopold eye that black ones and too big to do to be the smaller girls um
so it had to bend him so the barb fell off it got trapped in the sand he went to eat it and rays
will be aggressive when they're biting because they're they're like a cow they don't have teeth
to rip flesh they crush so he grabbed at it and tried to eat it and stabbed himself in the mouth
now he's losing weight because he he couldn't eat uh so best case scenario i didn't know that
that was going to be like that but once i got him in the net and then the barb kind of poked
out from the net it's like oh i'll just grab it out and that's what happened so that was
uh best-case scenario um we did it really quickly um and now that i'm here i think we're gonna
do a little fish store tour shopping um i don't know if i'll get anything or if you guys will
even see this video unless i want something but we'll see and that will be in a future video so
hope you guys enjoyed this one and i know that many of you can't relate to this sort of thing
so it's mostly interesting um but when i'm educating you on certain things like raise
don't need this and i have to you know almost you know battle with somebody in the comments that's
never had a stingray saying they need a substrate they've evolved for that they need decorations you
have to understand that i actually have hands-on experience and you know a wealth of community of
freshwater stingrays that definitely agree with this it's never happened to me because i don't
keep them in certain situations will that happen again odds are no but the odds increase with the
substrate anyways i hope you guys enjoyed today's video if you're not subscribed to this channel
yet make sure you do i make like videos like this all the time see you guys in the next one