hi I'm Irene with Girl Talks Fish I'm here today with Eric from Ray's Tank and this is a monster
fish store. I personally keep nano fish I'm gonna pick Eric's brain here to tell me about
my five favorite monster fish here and maybe one that I would like to get one day when I upgrade
my tanks so first of all we've got stingrays so um this is one of the Stingrays these are
these are the Pearl stingrays they're one of the more common species we carry around here this is
a good beginner type of stingray when you have a smaller tank they're not beginner fish but they
are good starting stingrays because they're only going to go 14 inches for a male the male stays
smaller than the females females right around 18 inches or for the pearls they're going to be your
best bet when it comes to keeping in a smaller tank like 150 gallons 120 gallons the pearls uh
the male is going to be your best bet to keep in that sort of tank do they need to be in a
community like multiple stingrays or can you just keep one you can actually just keep one they are
social as well so you can keep them in a group but they don't exactly require groups as well okay and
how big of a tank are we talking about at least 120 gallons you mostly you're worrying about the
footprint which is two by four [feet], 120 gallons are usually built that size but it's two by
four [feet] that you want want to start off with anything wider would be better but that's kind of
your minimum size you want to start off with and I know nothing about stingrays are we still talking
about normal tropical temperatures and water parameters yes so your tropical temperatures
are going to be at least around 80 degrees plus 82 degrees the Stingrays themselves will need
a special parameter so like the pH usually just neutral so nothing too crazy on that preferably
zero ammonia zero nitrite if you have a little bit it's not a huge problem nitrates that's what
you're mostly looking for in any sort of cycle you want just a tad bit of nitrates in there nothing
too high or this is not completely zero as well and then what about diet I think you remember I
remember you mentioning frozen shrimp and tilapia yes they are also feeding off of frozen shrimp and
tilapia they will also feed off of uh earthworms live earthworms as well that's for very finicky
stingrays if they're not eating anything else as time of your last resort to feed them that
live earthworms or live ghost shrimp is another thing we feed them as well if they don't eat
anything else now you said arowana are one of the best-selling fish at your store so tell me
all about them what does it take to keep one the arowanas when you want to start off one of those
you want to start them off small so you have more time to grow them out um recommended tank size
typically at least start with a 180 [gallons]. I always recommend grow out tanks so anything after
that you might want to get go up to about 300 gallons anything wider the better about three feet
wide would be your best bet to keep one of those arowanas since they're going to take quite a while
to grow out but 180 gallons would be a good start to grow out one of these arowanas but the water
up here right now are the albinos a lot people start off with the silvers they're going to be
the cheaper ones sometimes if they want air wants to stay smaller you can go for the black arowanas
or the jardinis they'll get up to only up two feet so you can actually comfortably keep them about
300 gallons they're amazing looking they have just a black stripe on them that makes them just stand
out a lot more with their accents anything special I should know about their care in terms of I know
you mentioned jumping might be a problem jumping is a huge problem with arowanas keep most of your
Lids shut um any big holes that you have in the tank keep them well sealed as well because they'll
just fly out your tank and then once they as they get bigger and bigger if they get up to a foot,
two feet you might want to actually stack things on top of the lid to weigh it down okay wow and
they eat the same thing as the Stingrays then the frozen tilapia and yes so frozen tilapia shrimp
um for silver arowanas if they are young enough it's better to train them onto floating food so
they'll freeze-dried krill um just because they commonly have an issue called drop eye where fat
b- builds up on the top of their eyeball makes them look force them to look down so you feed
them more floating Foods it promotes them and look up more often that way that the drop eye
is less of an issue on them it may still occur but it's not a severe but you did say the black
arowana seemed pretty immune to the drop eye yes the black arowana is completely immune to
drop by so you don't even have to worry about them having any sort of drop by plus they stay
smaller jardinis as well they're actually immune to drop eye as well now I have always loved clown
loaches especially a large school of them like you have here they just seem like playful puppies
they've got that striking color are they worth keeping I think they are worth keeping they can
be kind of a pain to keep sometimes because they are scaleless so they're more susceptible to ich
some people have experience with them when they say the ich magnets are hard to keep
um we haven't had too many issues with keeping clown loaches they just need a big school so
you want at least a group of five or more and how big of a tank would it would you need for
at least five so for five you can actually start them off and let about 40 breeder 55 gallon or 75
um they are known to get up to 12 inches I've seen them they look like giant tacos but they that
takes almost a decade to get to that size okay so for fully grown clown loaches yeah for five
of them you might need 180 gallons 200 gallons or more this size you seriously don't have to
worry about them for a long long time and do you keep them super hot to help kind of avoid that ich
I've heard some people keep them at pretty high temperatures we keep them at least 84 degrees okay
um just to prevent any ich we add a bit of salt in there as well so the salt kind of helps with
the fight against the ich in case anything tries to pop up on them we they're really good
for cleaning up any leftover food um they eat snails I heard snails is one of the best things
they they clean up after if you have any snail infestations or you just have a mystery smells
breeding weight too much and you can throw all the babies in there and just watch them pile up
on them and suck all the meat out the shell just entertaining to wash that for sure now are they
mostly mid-water bottom dwellers like what are they considered they're more or less bottom to Mid
dwellers they'll they'll kind of swim around the middle sometimes what would you pair them up with
in the top path if you had a giant tank like you were saying I would pair them up with uh I mean
the clown loaches aren't bad with community fish so you can put them with angelfish your rainbows
as well all those things uh discus wouldn't be a bad choice because they're both hot water yeah a
small group of clown loaches you don't want to do too big of a group because sometimes they'll get
overconfident and start be being slime coat suckers so if you have too big of a group it
might be an issue down the line but with smaller groups you can keep with community fish monster
fish you may be able to keep them with some South American Cichlids when they get huge um even then
you could keep them with the medium-sized monster fish so you can talk about the South American gar,
Otto Pikes, other Pike cichlids as well depending on their aggression but you can keep them with
similar size fish awesome So speaking of hot water fish tell me about The discus are they as hard to
care for as people say they are um they are pretty difficult definitely not a beginner fish for sure
um it's more for people that have kept fish around for a while but
um the better thing that we have with these discus is that we don't use any RO water so we actually
start them off in just standard like tap water with your conditioner and everything so that way
for people a lot of people don't have RO systems so it'd be a lot easier of a transition for them
and then for people that do have RO water that would also transition pretty smoothly compared
to going RO to non-RO water that'd be a very rough for The discus and they get to about like
what saucer plate size right yeah right around typically about the size your hand from finger to
finger so right around six inches from uh top to bottom for The discus high temperatures for them
84 degrees plus typically they're also schooling fish three or four should be okay but the bigger
the group the better and are they eaters as well what do you guys feed them they're a little
finicky depending on their race they we usually feed them blood worms brine shrimp sometimes
frozen shrimp as well number five is your favorite and the one that you recommend to beginners the
biker bisher bichirs that's the way the official and Eric says it tell me all about them so for
beginners I always recommend the senegalus that's the most common species the one that's going to
stay the smaller are they the ones that are here are these the senegalus or what these aren't the
senegalus these aren't the best beginner ones if it's good for a monster tank for sure they're
still fairly tough if you want to start beginner monster tank I don't think these would be a bad
idea either senegalus they tend to be the most active as well they're going to stay the smallest
um same thing with other bichirs they're social they like to dog pile on top of each other that's
why I really like the bichir species you can get a group of them they're fine solitary as well but
I like the group just because they do a whole dog pile and they'll squish themselves into a little
hiding spot I can see one kind of squished right here next to a very vigorous catfish and they're
very social with other other fish as well they'll stick around with catfish they'll sit next to
clown loaches they'll say it with almost anyone so they're pretty tough so they they'll actually go
up to a pretty wide range of temperatures they can go up to 84 degrees even 86 so if you want
to put them with any other fish like your discus your community fish as long as they're not going
to stay too small enough to fit in their mouth they'll be all right with most of the fish that
you keep them with as long as they're similar size they'll take frozen food they'll also take pallets
as well so in case you don't want to prepare frozen food all the time they won't actually
eat pellets they're not super picky they're almost like catfish with their amount of food
they'll just eat they'll eat almost anything that falls to the bottom of the tank as long
as it's food well there you guys have it five of my favorite monster fish at raised tank let
me know down in the comments which one you guys think I should get one day otherwise you can check
out the store tour we did over here time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see you in the next video