Do fire eels need caves?

[Nim Dibbley]

I have someone that wanted to trade a 13 inch fire eel for one of my fish, but I don't know if my tank has the right setup for it.

It is a 240 gallon tank with sand substrate and 4 large pieces of driftwood. There is one hollowed out piece of driftwood that forms a nice cave but my black ghost knife has staked that territory to himself.

I have heard fire eels will burrow in the sand and he can also kinda hide behind driftwood so i am thinking he might not need his own cave...but i have never owned one so i am not sure how vital the cave is to them....and at this time i don't really want to add another cave/pipe/wood/etc.

In the tank now is a red tailed giant gourami, BGK, GT and several bichers.

 

[dragonfish]

They like their own cave. Little ones burrow but the bigger ones usually like a place to hide. Mine used to share a log with a BGK and was fine for the most part.

Sent from my SGH-T679 using MonsterAquariaNetwork App

 

[Nim Dibbley]

They like their own cave. Little ones burrow but the bigger ones usually like a place to hide. Mine used to share a log with a BGK and was fine for the most part.

Sent from my SGH-T679 using MonsterAquariaNetwork App

hmmm...my bgk nips at and chases away the GT and bichers if they get to close to his home...and its a pretty tight fit so i don't think anything else would fit in there.

 

[dragonfish]

You might want to see if you can fit one in then. Mine has out grown his but when I tried to replace it he threw a tantrum, digging under everything and knocking stuff over. My knife would occasionally try to evict the eel by head butting him. This went on for years.

Sent from my SGH-T679 using MonsterAquariaNetwork App