odd thing to start today's video off with but i kept discus for 10 years
and you guys know the story we did everything with them
and you guys know we did everything with them from breeding them raising them planted tanks
breeding systems you name it we did absolutely everything with them until after about 10 years
with them i decided i'm going to take a break with them i i just want to try something else
discus at that point where the species of fish that i kept consecutively for that long period
of time 10 years you know then i thought to myself is there ever going to be another time
in my hobby where i keep a fish for so long that you know you just kind of get bored of it you just
kind of want to try something different you know you can only dedicate so many resources and time
and space to one fish before you're like okay i kind of want to try something else
then of course i had to remind myself
but i've been keeping freshwater stingrays for 15 years
so
with everything people get bored they want to try something different more advanced
less work you know something more colorful more active you name it you know
people switch aquariums all the time and i've tried my best to show everybody as many
combinations of fish and aquariums as i possibly could over the years but the stingrays are not
going anywhere i can't see myself without keeping freshwater stingrays they're literally a part of
who i am as a as a hobbyist for sure they're part of my hobby identity i identify as a stingray
story time the first time i saw a freshwater stingray in a store setting where i knew i could
like buy one because that was a foreign thing was about 17 years ago i walked into the sore
saw these rays had to have them so i do the right thing and i go home and research and i realize
this isn't a fish i should take lightly they have specific demands incredible amount of ammonia
they get absolutely massive they need big tanks big filtration big diet big water changes this
is a huge space commitment financial commitment time commitment you name it it's just commitment
written all over it i spent two years researching them to the point where i felt comfortable
enough to get them i went back to the store wanted to get some rays uh they're like sure
we can get you the raise i was like awesome before we do that i'm gonna need a big aquarium what do
you guys have in the well the biggest aquarium we have mind you i'm in atlanta canada i don't have
resources and access to next to anything everything you guys see in this gallery
has nothing to do with my location and everything to do with this channel and uh its ability to to
source things that the average hobbyist simply can't and i'm very grateful lucky that i've been
able to do that but bottom line is the store said we only go up to 180 gallon aquariums and i said
well they're gonna need a lot bigger than that we'll get what else is what are the other options
like well maybe find a custom builder or build it yourself and build it myself are you literally
crazy are you okay i'm not building a massive tank i'll figure that out i had no idea how to do that
uh what about filtration only have filters that go up to 180 gallons it's like oh cool
fantastic what about diet i mean they're going to need a large pellet when they get older or
specific food fresh food etc what do you got well we don't sell that type of food here either
i said okay let me get this straight and i want you guys to really hear about this you don't send
you don't sell the tanks to house this animal you don't sell the filtration to house this
animal and you don't even sell the food to feed this animal but you sell this animal
nice after two years of research and two years of fingers crossed and i can't wait
and the anticipation and the excitement and they pulled the rug right out from under me
i went home again and i thought i'm going to learn how to build aquariums
i'm going to figure this out and i did and i started building tanks and i started building
big tanks and documenting it and taking pictures and videos and i'd post them on forums and and
uh youtube just to show because i was using a liquid rubber thing that was the first time ever
used in a in the aquarium hobby and i wanted to document it it's much more popular now but
i realized that there's so many people out there that benefit from my
do-it-yourself projects i started making more and more and more all inspired by freshwater stingrays
meanwhile behind the scenes the industry was watching i became more popular and more popular
and more popular over time and they got madder and madder and madder they could not stand the fact
that an average guy on the internet is showing millions of people how to build their own
aquariums and filters and equipment and food and various things that helps them save money and
take real control over their hobby and i'm not limiting them to their availability and what's
available what's being told that they should be buying or what's in a magazine ad and that's
they were mad and by mad i mean they were blocking me from events
nobody would sponsor me um sending me cease to desist sending me disrespectful emails
nobody knows who you are you have no impact on this hobby you're gonna you're just an
overnight sensation etc etc etc etc etc ironic how the industry hated me so much
but it's the industry that created me if that store would have just responsibly sold those fish
and tanks to house them in the filtration and food the king of diy would have never happened
now the whole point of this video is to do an update on the actual stingrays but i do like to
bring those types of topics up from time to time with that said for those that don't know
this aquarium is eight feet long so from there to there eight feet and five feet that way and
28 inches tall its capacity is 700 gallons currently houses three black diamond stingrays
the big one in the center is a female then we have a smaller female and we also
have a male mind you these fish might look incredibly different from what we began with
and what we actually started with if you remember we got these guys about five years ago i built a
100 gallon holding tank to kind of grow them out until i built them something much larger
they eventually traveled throughout the aquarium gallery until we got them this 700 gallon aquarium
and now it is just theirs well sort of you guys will also remember we have a biker
in this aquarium it was in here originally i decided i'm going to try him out in the oscar
aquarium for a few weeks he just wasn't himself he's far more active and far happier in the
stingray tank so i simply put him back sometimes it doesn't matter if you want things to work
you just got to pay attention to the fish make sure they're happy and do what's best for them
with that said i purchased these three stingrays with the idea that maybe one day we'll breed them
in fact we will breed them it just comes down to a matter of time you give stingrays exactly what
they need and they're going to eventually spawn now mind you i only got one male and two females
the thought process behind there is that it will not only dilute aggression between the male and
the female but he also has a choice of which one he wants to go for and or impregnant two
at the same time the reason being in diluting the digression is because stingray's breeding
can be incredibly rough and the male is relentless until he gets what he wants he will grip her he'll
bite her he'll rip her disc apart until she flips over and allows him to get her pregnant we have a
bit of a problem though with this trio the male the one here in the in the front is the smallest
of the three big mama back there is too big and too powerful for him to do what he wants to her so
we're just going to keep giving it a little bit more time i i would have guessed they would have
bred a couple of years ago but he's been growing a lot slower than the other two and uh not not
nearly as strong or powerful with that said he does have his claspers rolled he is sexually
mature now his claspers are under his tail at the back there you might even be able to see them
it's almost like a guppies go to podium or however you pronounce that
essentially though these are the male sexual organs he has two of them and when they roll
into like a little burrito he can now deliver his sperm to the female and that's how you
know that a male is actually mature a female is typically sexually mature after two to three years
so everybody in this tank is ready to go he just doesn't want to do what i want him to do
i want you to do her and to do her start listening to me grow get big enough maybe
she's just not impressed maybe she's like oh i'm not into little guys i'm not into short guys
anyways the thing about black diamond stingrays is you can see it right from here
we got them at one point and they looked incredibly different with black diamond stingrays
that spotting can at times explode and turn into many little dots for example look at this female
every one of these clusters used to be a dot like one of the bigger dots
and they just explode into smaller ones this happens with age and the more dots they have
is more ideal to a lot of black diamond keepers they want as many spots as possible
to a certain extent my flavor is more her than it is her i don't find she has enough small dots
she has just enough and he's pretty good but she she would be ideal for me i
wouldn't want any more than that but i don't have control over that i don't have a say i mean we're
just going to have to give these guys a little bit more time they are enjoying their aquarium they
are the first fish that i see when i walk in here and it's a reminder of why i do what i do i just
absolutely love these guys i love them like a like like you would love a dog or a cat or like
a mammal that's in your i love these guys like little puppies and that's what they are to me
they're friendly they recognize me they always get excited when they see me i'd like to think
it's because they like me too but it's probably because they're hungry and want food some updates
for this aquarium obviously you guys knew that uh we built new lids for this tank out of this uh
corrugated roofing panel stuff it's just plastic i showed you guys this a hundred times
but it covers the entire tank and it's very light i used to have glass lids on this and it was next
to impossible to remove them all the time but now i mean i mean like i could do with a finger
and i can remove them all very easily cheap uh they're indestructible they're not going to break
the rays can kind of get up and lift them up but that is why the water levels here
as opposed to here because they will come up out of the water and uh mess with the lids
because at the end of the day it's like having um it's like having a cross between puppies
and little children they are curious and they always get into trouble always always always you
might also be wondering what's going on with the substrate how come there's just a little bit of
substrate there and nowhere else i've made videos on why i don't do substrate in large aquariums
with large monster fish a lot of the times it simply causes more problems than it's worth
but the little bit of substrate that is in there guess where that came from that's a lot isn't it
they digested it in the 2000 they used to be in there and they had
a substrate and when they're eating sometimes they ingest a little bit of
sand some will argue that it's good for their digestive system it's part of it others will
say that it's one of the leading causes in constipation and eventual stingray death with
that said i just haven't removed it um it's just scattered and it's messy and i don't really care
that much uh it also gives them a little bit to kind of play around in although they don't require
it that's the same reason for the air stone they love to play in the bubbles nothing more than that
um uh what else was i gonna do oh yeah lighting we built new lights for this you guys remember that
those are just common household lights uh the next thing that i want to do and then i am going to do
is build a new filter this massive canister filter has been running this aquarium or running
the stingray aquarium whichever one they've been in for four years now and i think something in
it's malfunctioning because a lot of the times it kicks back some of the debris it's a great filter
for what it is and very simple and easy to use a little overpriced and doesn't come with the pump
i had to buy the pump but after four years of uh having one would i get one again no uh i don't
like them that much i might continue to use it if i could take it apart and fix whatever the problem
is but bottom line is i'm going to build a massive filter for not only these guys
but the 2000 gallon as well because that is only being run on a small canister right now currently
and we're probably going to do large 55-gallon barrel fluid fluidized filters or some sort of
a trickle tower of some sort i'm not sure but they will be stand alone system so i will have to buy
build two really big filters for them other than that there's not a whole lot to update with this
aquarium other than the fact the rays are getting bigger they're getting prettier and they're well
the girls are ready to breed but your boy isn't he's such a disappointment
anyways that's just the generic basic update on the stingray aquarium just bring you guys up to
speed on what's going on with it and you know some of the like little future plans
and what's been happening but i really wanted to just kind of tell you that story about why
stingrays mean so much to me they are absolutely my favorite fish if i could only have one fish
like a single fish it would be the asian air one if i could only have one individual fish
but i could only if i could have a tank of one species of fish it would absolutely entirely
be freshwater stingrays i don't think they do well alone but they do absolutely somebody's texting me
absolutely fantastic in a group and they become more puppy-like and more active and just
absolutely fascinating and i hope today's video kind of opened your eyes to freshwater stingrays
maybe get you interested maybe help you understand some of the things that come along with them
uh but in the near future i want to do this other video i shouldn't i should put this on
a tripod a lot of people get pissed off when i don't hold it on a tripod uh in the future
video what i really want to do is tell you all of the fascinating facts that uh i find personally
fascinating about freshwater stingrays and i think that you guys will as well so keep an eye
out for that if you are interested in building big aquariums or small aquariums or any aquarium and
of any size or any type or filtration or any type of filter every type of filter equipment
stands furniture you name it when it comes to the aquarium hobby consider getting a copy of
my book the ultimate do-it-yourself handbook for the do-it-yourself aquarist and let this
book allow you to take control of your hobby and do absolutely everything you want to do
just like i did probably should have mentioned where you get it link is in the description