Five spiny eels, 2 tiretrack and 3 black spot, 2'+ in 240 gal

[Fish Tank Travis]

Not that I don’t believe how it has gone with fire eels for some of you, but my experience with them has been quite the opposite. At first, they can be hard to get feeding, and mine still don’t eat pellets. I’ve had two of them for over a year now, and they are pushing around 20” (they were 4” when I got them). They are voracious eaters. I feed them night crawlers, frozen shrimp, frozen tilapia, frozen krill, and a few other things. I have also fed them frozen bloodworms and live red wigglers in the past. They eat all of it and stuff themselves with as much as I will feed. I’ve been pretty lucky with them considering the issues I’ve heard about people having.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Not that I don’t believe how it has gone with fire eels for some of you, but my experience with them has been quite the opposite. At first, they can be hard to get feeding, and mine still don’t eat pellets. I’ve had two of them for over a year now, and they are pushing around 20” (they were 4” when I got them). They are voracious eaters. I feed them night crawlers, frozen shrimp, frozen tilapia, frozen krill, and a few other things. I have also fed them frozen bloodworms and live red wigglers in the past. They eat all of it and stuff themselves with as much as I will feed. I’ve been pretty lucky with them considering the issues I’ve heard about people having.

Thank you for that input. Yeah, I ran into one keeper (when I was picking up his fish being donated) and he had several fire eels hanging in the middle of the water, huge guys, must have been well over 24" and really thick. Striking and beautiful. He said that they eat anything he puts in their tank ravenously.

Yours and that example appear all I have come across so far.

 

[Chub_by]

Beautiful eels, spiny eels are certainly among my favourite fish!
I find it rather weird that they'd prefer pellets over cut fish - spiny eels are usually very hard to get to eat pellets.

 

[Matteus]

How are these guys doing lately? They look great in the video

 

[RemainVayne]

How are these guys doing lately? They look great in the video

Also looking for an update thebiggerthebetter

I have a large black spot in my 150 and a 5" fire growing out. I'd really like to add both to my 360 at the same time, which will be a while obviously, but always hear spiny eels don't congregate the best. Figured it'd be best to introduce both to the new tank together to try and minimize territory disputes...

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

As you know I have failed at keeping the fire eels.

No big changes in our spiny eel tank, except some tank mates come and go. Same eels, just bigger. Our eels (all?) have the very tip of their tail fin missing little bits here and there. Yet, I have never witnessed any aggression and have never seen the damage being fresh, nor any other damage. So IDK really who is responsible, the eels themselves or maybe not. FWIW.

Here is a terrible update video of a failed feeding attempt. Everyone is freaked out, see the description field on YouTube:

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

A yearly update. The eels have done well except the fattest tiretrack, the one that is the greediest for the low quality pellets I fed the tank (I stopped since then and for now switched to all NLS pellets). This one perished some months ago. I was sure it wasn't healthy for it to be eating so much food and more so food of low quality but I couldn't stop it.

About 31" and 5 years old:




A video update from Nov 2019, after the passing of the tiretrack above.

The remaining 4, 1 tiretrack and 3 black spots, have recently gone to a new 1800 gal, where they can finally stretch and swim. They also have really taken to thawed glass minnows of ~2" for the past half a year. They hadn't liked cut pilchards or herring I was throwing in the tank before for 4 years (tank mates took those) but when I switched to the glass minnows they took to them little by little and now love them.

You can see some of the transfer at 33 min here:

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

The 3 black spots and the one tiretrack have been doing well in the 1800 gal. Despite being in a new tank with different colors of the background and bottom, the tiretrack is still really dark and to see the pattern one must strain the vision (the first photo).

No more tattered tail tips either with the 10x more space.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

The 4 eels, 3x spotted and 1x TT, can be seen here and there throughout the video but the cutest footage that takes the cake is 12:20 to 12:50 min:

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Our first eels from back in 2009-2011, in 120 gal grow out with 60 other species of fish: