- Location
- Virginia
My bat ray leapt out of my pond at some point today, and I found her after probably an hour or so of flopping around on the floor. I picked her up and she had no movement besides the holes behind her eyes gasping for water. I popped her back into the pond, where she promptly sank to the bottom and laid there, gasping at the water. After a few minutes, she began to move a bit, and after an hour, she began to swim, bumping into everything head first, and not seeming to have any control. A few hours later, she was swimming around, avoiding the majority of obstacles, and so I fed her. Last check, she was swimming fine, she had a small mark on her back from flopping around, but looked pretty much fine. I have now banished my picasso trigger to the refugium (I know, it's not much of a refuge with a predator in there, but there was already an undulated there) since I've seen it biting my bat ray, and I think it's the reason why she launched herself out of the pond. I've now installed a fence around the lip of the pond, and so she won't be able to jump out, although I think the cause of her jumping has been solved (they will jump in nature occasionally, but more or less when startled or trying to knock something off of them) as she recognizes me by sight and is not startled by me at all. I'll post some pictures of the final set up on my website when I get a chance, for now, the original pictures are still there.
