Unbelievable!

I just wanted to share a very shocking experience that just happened to me. I'll start by saying that when I was on vacation this summer, a bait shop was selling American eels as bait. I figured I might as well buy one and see how it would do in a quarantine tank I had set up. I bought it the last day on vacation and brought him home. This was in July. I put him in the tank when I got home late at night. I then went to bed. When I woke up the eel was gone. I searched everywhere and tore everything up but had no luck in finding him. I was just doing some maintenance on the tank, and checking how everything was (this was a qt for any incoming food or even some grow outs). I forgot to mention that this is one of those small cube like tanks probably around 30 gallons with three chambers in the back of the tank that allow water to be filtered. The first two consist of sponges, while the last was just the pump/sump and heater. Well I was checking those three chambers to see if any fish had jumped the tight ledge in there and I saw what looked to be like a few fish in the third chamber. I turned the flashlight on my phone and saw parts of the eel and I couldn't believe what I saw. After 6+ months the eel was still alive and seemed to be doing fine. I knew these fish were tough but that tough? I then threw in a goldfish to see if it would react. I couldn't see much do to the wires and lighting but I did see the torn up goldfish float up about 30 seconds later. I couldn't believe that the eel was able to survive in that small chamber and not eat for 6 months!


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Eyebedam said:

You need to get some pics of that eel. My interest are Der sparked.

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Okay I will soon. Are the picture glitches fixed yet?


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MyGiants said:

If he was in the filter he ate whatever food got sucked into the filter. What concerns me more is you haven't cleaned your filter for over 6 months yikes!

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I understand what you're saying but it's a bit complicated. He's in a small tank that has a sort of three compartment backing. The first houses a course sponge for anything that gets past the sort of skimmer, and the second is a finer sponge for anything that the first missed. The third houses solely the sump and heater. That's why I'm confused because there's no way fish could go through that. Maybe he has a filter feeding adaptation? Anyways I always just rinsed the sponges from the first two compartments and never worried about the sump because it always functioned fine. I'll try to post some pics later. I plan on leaving him in there until I get a tank set up with a better lid. I figure he'll be fine for a little more time in there until I get it set up.


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