Fire Eel log

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Bnortz said:
That is an awesome eel! Sweet!!!!!!!
Fire%20Eel.jpg
Click to expand...

Is that your eel? Looks good :p.

Also, other fire eel owners if you guys would like to add about your eels here, feel free. I am hoping this thread can help people that are considering keeping fire eels.
 
Update

Sorry, no video yet :? but coming soon, promise! (I need hubby to film while I feed and he's been busy with work)

For those of you thinking about getting a fire eel, after only 1 week of having mine I love it! and recommend it 100% (just in case I didn't make that clear in my previous posts, lol). It is by far the smartest fish I have. Kraken will now "let me know" when he is hungry by coming up all the way to the top when I open the tank's canopy (before I had to put my hand about 6in down and wiggle the worm, now he comes straight up and needs no enticement to come close to my hand, the down side is that my leaf fish are starting to take the worms too and I would rather save them for kraken). So far I have been feeding him 6 small earthworms daily, he will still "beg" for more but his belly looks pretty full and I don't want to overfeed him. He now takes food from the inside of my hand.

To other fire eel keepers:

-How much do you feed your eel?
-Does 5-6 small earthworms for a 7-8inch fire eel seem excessive? I pretty much feed mine until I can see its belly start to get round.
-Any recommendations on how to switch to frozen foods (ie beef heart)? So far Kraken is only interested in live food, any frozen food dropped into the tank gets ignored long enough that my other fish get to it. The plan is to, once kraken has a stronger association that hand contains food, to feed thawed beefheart and see if he takes it. I would love to know how other people achieved this switch.

Thanks for reading :silly:

Edit: I forget where I read this (probably some biology class I had), but I read that predators are smarter than herbivores because they need to hunt for their food. Between kraken and the leaf fish I am taking it as confirmation that predators learn food associations faster which I think is pretty cool - who knew, evolution works! (yeah yeah I know, I am making a pretty big generalization based on a very small sampling population so no Nature or Science papers for me (PS: if you get that joke, you're a nerd like me :cool: ))
 
Sounds pretty cool.

How big a tank needs to be to be able to properly have a fire eel?

My tank is really small, but last year I fall in love with this hobby, so now I'm thinking to upgrade my tank or get a new one ( maybe in summer), just courious about the needs of this kind of eel because looks georgous!
 
ejaramillo01 said:
Sounds pretty cool.

How big a tank needs to be to be able to properly have a fire eel?

My tank is really small, but last year I fall in love with this hobby, so now I'm thinking to upgrade my tank or get a new one ( maybe in summer), just courious about the needs of this kind of eel because looks georgous!
Click to expand...

In the wild adult fire eels get to 50in but in captivity they "only" grow to 20-30in, so for a full grown I have read anything between 100+ and 180+gals, I think probably 150+gal should be fine (72in in length). I have read of people keeping them in smaller tanks though. They do live a long time (some websites I have read say 20years). I am hoping to keep mine in this 75gal for a couple of year and then upgrade to the biggest tank I can get, but 180gal is the smallest I will go.

So, to give you a concrete answer, I would say a juvenile fire eel can be kept in a 75gal until it is about 1/3 - 1/2 of the tanks length (20in in my case) and then moved into a bigger tank if it gets bigger. When are you planning to upgrade and how big?
 
Thanks for your answer
I planing to upgrade during this summer, I just need to save some money, i would like to go to a 90G tank, maybe I won't be able to host an eel, but the 90G will give me a lot of options.

Thanks again, I enjoyed this thread, Kraken looks incredible!!
:p
 
ejaramillo01 said:
Thanks for your answer
I planing to upgrade during this summer, I just need to save some money, i would like to go to a 90G tank, maybe I won't be able to host an eel, but the 90G will give me a lot of options.

Thanks again, I enjoyed this thread, Kraken looks incredible!!
:p
Click to expand...

Thanks! :D

I think you might be able to pull off a 90gal, start a thread on it if you want to see what other people say, I have only had my eel for a very short time and everything that I told you is based on researching. Maybe someone else who has actually grown out their eel to fully grown can pinch in. Best of luck and thanks for reading!
 
The promised video.....almost

So here is the hand feeding video I promised, it is not the best quality :( but I still hope you guys like it :p

Ok, I am computer illiterate.....how do I attach an .avi file?
 
yeah upload on youtube, copy and paste the link, and it will automatically embed for our viewing pleasure!
 
Thanks! :D I used to have more plants but I had to move the vals into my 20gal because the tinfoils ate most of them. They do nibble on the ones that are left, but nothing too bad yet. I will say it is tough to keep a nice planted tank with the tinfoils but they were my first fish so they are staying :rolleyes:

Kraken is doing well, I think he has grown in these past couple of weeks. I laid a piece of slate against the back of the tank and he proceeded to claim that as his "home". So far I have been digging the earthworms out of the yard but I am going to run out of places to dig soon, lol. kraken is going to eat me out of house and home. I'll probably try bloodworms next. Next video I will try to post is of kraken hunting ghost shrimp.

Thanks everyone for following :p
 
Hunting shrimp

That next video of hunting a shrimp will be something out of the ordinary!!!

Can't wait to see it, if possible, because I think that will require a lot of patience no?
:clown:
 
ejaramillo01 said:
That next video of hunting a shrimp will be something out of the ordinary!!!

Can't wait to see it, if possible, because I think that will require a lot of patience no?
:clown:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I am still not sure whether I will be able to really show the "catch", there is lots of cover in my tank. Every couple of weeks I get some ghosties and as soon as I drop them in the tank both kraken and my leaf fish will start hunting so that's when I will be filming, however most of the actual catching goes on after the lights turn off. It's going to be tricky for sure. I tried last night but my LFS was out of ghosy shrimp =(. I will also try to use a better camera this time around.
 
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