Hi Zephyr~
I had a fire eel awhile back (which I sold when we moved). He was about 14" when I sold him, they are rather slow growers, I would think it would take a couple of years to reach full size. I kept mine in a 29g with sand on the bottom as they like to bury themselves in it. They will dig up any plant you put in the substrate so plantings should be limited to java fern or anubias that can be attached to pieces of driftwood. They also like to have something to hide in or under. Larger pieces of driftwood, or large rocks that can't be toppled or even
pvc tubes will all work. My fire eel never ate any size fish. In fact, I used to use his tank as a grow out tank for various fry. They like to eat live worms, (like earthworms, blackworms....I used to raise earthworms in the backyard for my eel) and they will even learn to take them from your fingers. One thing that fire eels really, really love though are ghost shrimp! They go crazy for them, and it's cool to watch them hunt them down. I used to keep a small 5g for the shrimp, feed them on flake fish food, then when they were nice and healthy (gut loaded) I would feed them to the eel.
Right now I have a small "yellow tailed" eel.....that's how the pet store sold it. I have never seen this kind of eel before (frankly, that's why I bought it), not in any
LFS or any mag either. Also, the only thing this small eel will eat are live brine shrimp. This one won't take small fish fry either, or even very small ghost shrimp. Unlike the fire eel it doesn't care to bury itself in sand, prefers to hang in the plants instead.....
From what I've read, the tiretrack eel has basically the same behaviors as the fire eel, except they will take small fish. I don't know if the zigzag eel will eat fish or not.
HTH 
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