What And How Can You Feed Spiny Eels

[IronLung]

I have decided on a 220 gallon tank...found a great deal which drew me away from the 120 -180 gallon i was aiming at... Aqua scape wise i am thinking of a amazon river set up with sand and with a few "real" plants in the backround , some holy rock and laying drift wood to create caves and hideouts and a few custom decor that would make good caves... Fish wish i am think mainly Discus(4-6) ...some angle pairs (maybe 3 pairs)..a blue and a gold gourami and 2 or 4 kissers, a school of Rainbow (maybe 8)... a Cuvier Bichir or which ever one does not get too big...I want eels


I was thinking peacock or tire eel even though i like the fire eel the most...,but i hear the fire ell will not tolerate other eels...or is it just other fire eels? another thing about eels is what so ffed them ...i hear only live....is this true ... so here or a few questions

1. in a 220 gallon tank..with the fish above..can i get more then one of the larger eels..like the tire track and fire...will a fire eel with a fire...will they get along with the peacock...

2. will my bichir have promblems with the eel

3. what can i feed them....i can keep black worms easily and use a turkey baster to disperse among the eel...but i don't won't cultivate white worms or brine shrimp (i can but live brine ship for $2.99 a teasppon...maybe once a month...)...what else live food can i feed them that could be easy to grow...the black worms are easier for me to buy.....will the eat freeze dried blood worms or brine shrimp...? any kind of sinking pellets.. or Frozen foods...like mysis shrimp or larve and what not

4. i hear eels dig up plants...but everyone i see has them in tanks with fake and real plants and the eel seem to perfer caves...so whats the deal...

5.do bichir dig up plants...are is this also exagerrated

6. I have sand..i will get a school of 3" cory cats for to help tidy up the bottom...i also here that blue crayfish tidy up the bottom, will the bichir or eel eat the cory or crayfish.. or choke trying to eat them, (crayfish will be 3" to 5")... crayfish like to fight other bottom dwellers like crabs, shrimp, frogs and otehr crayfish...will they hurt the cory?

7.will a african black knife go in a 220 gallon tank with a ghost knife?

8. For the plants i get ...do a i need a CO2 system...i hear these can be dangerous...and take alot of monitoring...they tend to scare you away from real plants the way they talk about them on the internet...i was thinking a get a system pluged into a timer and the lights on tyhe same timer...so the light comes on when the CO2 comes on....and having that system go on for about five hours through that night...how much CO2 do the plants need?

 

[Gankutsuou]

here's the long go around....

most eels are hard to feed, and having tons of discus and angels won;'t help...
then you have the whole arguement about keeping discus with angels, paracites, and so on.


I have had no problems with my eels or bichir tearing up plants.


I myself would not suggest actual cory cats, but instead something larger like brochis to go with a bichir. or a ghost knife.

 

[IronLung]

I thought brochis were cory cats..but yeah...when i said cory cats i meant the brochis.... I never heard about the trouble keeping discus amd angels...I read up on this stuff on various sites and sources and it seems like alot of the sources deemed crediable don't know squat...anyway... the eels might have trouble eating ..you may be right...thats why i was thinking of the turkey basters or some other tubing to reach them...

tell me more about this parasite problem with angles and discus..i'd hate to leave the discus out...and what do you feed your eels?

 

[Gankutsuou]

you can easily read more up on our new world cichlid section.

 

[IronLung]

Thanx..i am checking that section...getting some good info...

 

[Dragonscales]

The best way to feed eels in an enviroment with alot of greedy fish is to feed copious amounts of blackworms IMO. Buy a ton of them and throw them all in the tank at once. The fish may pick off some of them but the rest will burrow into the substrate where the eels can pick them off at their own pace (Blackworms will happily live in the substrate so aren't going to overload your tank with nitrates due to dying either). Earthworms are also a good option, either whole or chopped up. Brine shrimp are practically inert when it comes to nutrients so are a poor choice anyhow. Glass shrimp are sometimes taken as are various meaty foods chopped to size. It varies with eels as to what they will take so try a variety and see what happens.

Another option is feeding smaller amounts at night once the lights are off. Eels are mostly nocturnal anyhow so will be active while the fish are sleeping in most cases.

As for plants, well, my lot are forever digging up any plant I put in with them, they won't even leave the java moss alone. I think it depends more on how many inches of eel per gallon you have though If you have a large tank with few specimens then I guess they wouldn't be as much of a headache as a larger number would. Once the plants spread and take over the tank I guess you wouldn't have as much trouble due to the roots mingling together and forming a tight network (personally I am going to refrain moving my eels into the next tank I get until this happens and see how it goes).

In regards to CO2, this really depends on the amount and type of plants you want to keep. I'd suggest coming up with a rough plan and throwing it about in the planted tank section, the guys there should be able to give you plenty of help

 

[Canis-Equus]

3. what can i feed them....i can keep black worms easily and use a turkey baster to disperse among the eel...but i don't won't cultivate white worms or brine shrimp (i can but live brine ship for $2.99 a teasppon...maybe once a month...)...what else live food can i feed them that could be easy to grow...the black worms are easier for me to buy.....will the eat freeze dried blood worms or brine shrimp...? any kind of sinking pellets.. or Frozen foods...like mysis shrimp or larve and what not.

4. i hear eels dig up plants...but everyone i see has them in tanks with fake and real plants and the eel seem to perfer caves...so whats the deal...


6. I have sand..i will get a school of 3" cory cats for to help tidy up the bottom...i also here that blue crayfish tidy up the bottom, will the bichir or eel eat the cory or crayfish.. or choke trying to eat them, (crayfish will be 3" to 5")... crayfish like to fight other bottom dwellers like crabs, shrimp, frogs and otehr crayfish...will they hurt the cory?



8. For the plants i get ...do a i need a CO2 system...i hear these can be dangerous...and take alot of monitoring...they tend to scare you away from real plants the way they talk about them on the internet...i was thinking a get a system pluged into a timer and the lights on tyhe same timer...so the light comes on when the CO2 comes on....and having that system go on for about five hours through that night...how much CO2 do the plants need?

Hiya...

Ok the parts of your post i can answer...

3/Experiment - eels straight from the shop as opposed to bigger hand ins will usually have eaten just bloodworm unless they are very large. Bigger eels may take frozen mussels, any frozen meaty stuff. I find my smaller eels are more attracted to red coloured frozen food than they are to dull coloured stuff. Live generally goes down better!

4/ None of my four (now five but hes only been here a day!), eels have dug up live plants but my guys (siamensis, dayi and two zebrinus) have ever dug up anything. I find that in a spacious tank with good planting, not too bright, they loose the desire to burrow, which i personally think is an emergency escape tactic, not an everyday thing anyawy, and can more often be found resting behind or under bog wood or lodged in the leaves of plants pretending to be a plant stem or leaf, poised to catch passing dinner.

Time will tell if Ellis the biggie (and unidentified as yet) will do the same or trash the tank.

3 Cory cats or even brochis wont do that much tidying to be honest, if you do go for thsoe get full sized adults, baby corys or brochis are plenty small enough to be eaten, or attempted anyway.

Crayfish are aggressive little gits, id avoid at all costs, ive even seen them have a nip at MUCH bigger fish and since all spiney eels are soft bodied and care must be taken with medication, you really do want to avoid them getting injured. Id steer away from the holey rocks you wanted too as these are rarely smooth and could cause scratches which may get infected. If you want to provide hiding places (and ive not really found the need to do so yet), plastic tubing, coated wtih aquarium silicone and then rolled in sand or smooth pebbles will provide a great hide but still look ok.

8/ CO2. If your tank is well lit and if you use a substrate fertiliser (i used pure peat under sand, just at the back and sides where i wanted the plants), you wont need it. You really do only need serious CO2 for the uber planted tanks like the artistic works of the likes of Takashi Amano et al. CO2 without the plants who require it can cause problems. I have all live plants in my tanks and do not use CO2 - granted they are not competition standard tanks but thats not what im after and competition standard tanks are actually rarely the best environment for FISH!

Hope that helps

Em