Peacock Eel

[Chuka1212]

Ok, so after a few days of research/rehousing some fish I have bought a peacock eel. I have him in a 20gal tank with just a loach, oto, and a couple of guppies. I have a few questions:

1) I have read very little on eel compatibility with other fish. I have heard they can or will eat smaller fish, is that common? And also could I keep a bamboo shrimp with my peacock eel?

2) I know they have a preference for meaty food, especially bloodworms is what most people say to feed him. I have some, but also have some brine shrimp that have been in the freezer for a while that I would like to get rid of first. If I stuck some shrimp in a shallow dish with gravel on the bottom of the tank, would he take that? Are they picky eaters?

3) Also, do they tend to be more diurnal or nocturnal feeders?

Your help is greatly appreciated in my first venture into the eel world.

 

[Chuka1212]

Wow, I guess no one knows anything about eels... looks like I'll be going to Yahoo answers...

 

[Maximus]

1. They'll eat fry, just like most other fish, and I wouldn't see a problem with the shrimp.

2. You could try brine shrimp, but tbh it has pretty nothing in it. So your far better off feeding bloodworms, earthworms ect
And I'd like to see you try and keep a handful of brineshrimp in a bowl...underwater with a current!

3. Mine came out all the time in the day, I suppose feeding/training will have alot to do with it too.

IMO one of the most important things when keeping eels is a sandy substrate, especially seeing how much mine
loved burying itself.

HTH

 

[Rubix]

agreed, sand or fine and smooth substrate is a must with these guys. my neighbor's eats bloodworms - however since this fish is always lurking in the substrate, his clown loaches and sharks eat the worms before they fall to the bottom for the eel... he uses a turkey baster and sucks some worms up in it and sprays them down to the eel to avoid this dilemma.

don't mean to stray from the topic, but what kind of loach do you have? as i take it you only have one. most loaches are very social and need to be kept in groups.

 

[Straydum]

generally would accept all live foods, frozen or not. if it doesn't, give it a few days.

agreed, sand or fine and smooth substrate is a must with these guys. my neighbor's eats bloodworms - however since this fish is always lurking in the substrate, his clown loaches and sharks eat the worms before they fall to the bottom for the eel... he uses a turkey baster and sucks some worms up in it and sprays them down to the eel to avoid this dilemma.

not quite true i would say. its subjective to your eels. i have seen eels take food straight from hand, peacocks zigzags etc. my fire eel does that too. its the other way round for me, my eels eat everything and my bottom dwellers have close to nothing

 

[Chuka1212]

Thanks for the responses guys. I appreciate the personal experiences. To rubix, the loach I have is a Horsefaced Loach, and from what I understand they are not social but I could be wrong and correct me if I am.

Looks like I will have have to get out my bloodworms and get some earthworms.

2. You could try brine shrimp, but tbh it has pretty nothing in it. So your far better off feeding bloodworms, earthworms ect
And I'd like to see you try and keep a handful of brineshrimp in a bowl...underwater with a current!

And what I did was put the small, plastic dish with gravel in the water, then I "injected" the brine shrimp into the gravel with a syringe, and it worked very well. The shrimp stayed in the gravel, but it took forever for my eel to find them. So I decided to put the syringe right by his mouth when he was buried and he just ate straight out of the syringe! It was pretty cool.

Thanks for the info all!

 

[Dankerella]

Okay, I just bought a peacock eel a couple days ago, and I want to make sure that I can keep him alive!

So far I haven't seen my eel eat anything. I haven't seen it burrow either. When we bought it, it was burrowed in gravel just fine. I have the same size gravel in my tank plus all sorts of live plants, and some stacked drift wood. All it does is swim back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, along the backside of the tank.

I was reading around and noticed they don't eat flake food, so I went back to the store and found some food I thought it might like. Got some frozen cubes of shrimp/bloodworm mix. I'm sort of confused as to how to feed these to the eel. Do you just drop the whole thing in? Will it sink? Is it better to cut it into pieces? Will it even eat it? All my eel is interested in, is swimming back and forth! I don't even think it will notice food.

We already had some dry bloodworms on hand, but they are really hard to get to sink, so all the other fish eat them up before the eel even notices. I also bought some dry cubes of brine shrimp because I knew that stuff sinks easier. Eel didn't even notice that.

I also bought a vial of brine shrimp eggs that are supposed to hatch. Mainly because I thought it would be cool to watch, and I thought it would be good food for the eel. I don't think anything happened with that...

Could anyone please tell me if the frozen food will work, and how I feed it to him? Or if any of the other food I got will do? I saw someone uses a turkey baster to inject the food into the gravel? Will my eel find that, if he doesn't burrow yet? Or should I find someplace that sells live bloodworms?

I am also thinking about getting a second eel, maybe then it will calm down. I also want to get some really good piece of driftwood, or plastic prop that the eel can hide in. Maybe it will calm down and stop swimming back and forth?

PLEASE HELP!

 

[nmonks]

Just to be sure: there are several fish sold as "peacock eels". The most common species tends to be Macrognathus siamensis. It's a pinkish-brown animal with a beige stripe along the midline of the body from the head almost to the tail, plus a series of eyespots on the dorsal fin. These are relatively sociable eels and often do well in small groups. This does mean that each fish must be able to hide away when it wants to: they will fight if forced to share the same hollow ornament or whatever.

You absolutely must not, ever, keep these fish in a tank with gravel. Period. End of story. Doing this will lead to their inevitable death. What happens is the gravel abrades the skin, and sooner or later this allows a nasty bacterial infection to set in. Once this happens you will see the fish covered in bloody sores. There is no cure. The fish dies shortly afterwards. This point cannot be stressed strongly enough. The larger spiny eels are tougher and this is less of a problem, and the African species live in rocky habitats in parts of their range and do fine without sand. But the smaller Macrognathus absolutely must be kept in tanks with a smooth, silica sand substrate. Since silica sand costs next to nothing (at the garden centre in Berkhamsted, around £3 for 25 kilos!) so there's no excuse for not using it.

Spiny eels that do not settle down, for example because they can't burrow easily, are the spiny eels that are most likely to jump out. Floating plants like Indian fern are enormously helpful (I'd suggest mandatory, really) because they inhibit this jumping instinct.

They never eat flake. Frozen bloodworms, offered at night, will be taken. Thaw them out in a pot of some sort, drain off the "gunk", and dump the worms into the tank. Half a cube should be enough for even the largest Macrognathus siamensis, a juvenile would only need one quarter. Make 100% sure there is nothing in the tank that can compete with them at night. No catfish and no loaches. Mixing spiny eels with catfish and loaches = a dead spiny eel that has starved to death. Again, this is a non-negotiable aspect of their husbandry. Once settled in, you can sometimes add catfish and loaches if you have trained the eel to feed in the daytime. Some become quite tame, to the point where hand-feeding (using forceps) becomes possible. But new eels should never, ever be mixed with catfish or loaches.

Freeze dried food is useless for these fish.

Live earthworms, live bloodworms and live tubifex are their favourites.

I hope this helps,

Cheers, Neale

PS. Bob Fenner has republished my article 'The truth about spiny eels' at his Wet Web Media site; it has originally run in Practical Fishkeeping a year or two back. I'd humbly suggest you have a quick read through that article when you get the chance.