Help please; Fire eel only eats earthworms

[robroy]

I've a lovely 11" Fire eel-had it about 3 months now. When I first got it it didn't eat for weeks-tried frozen bloodworms, prawn, brineshrimp, fish etc. to no avail.

I'm pleased to say I finally got it to eat earthwoms and it takes these from my hand. Naturally I'm pleased but its a pain having to keep digging earthworms for it and I'd like to get it on some frozen foodstuff. But it shows no interest.

Now do I starve it or what? I'm used to weaning Dats onto pellets but have no experience with Fire eels. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Rob

 

[Loves severums]

pmed

 

[Wet Whiskers]

Getting fire eels onto pellets is almost impossible. I think I've heard of one. You might be able to get him to eat market shrimp over time, but earthworms are the favorite. Note that you can buy worms used for bait.

 

[TheEelKing]

Mine will only eat earthworms and frozen krill. I noticed that krill was not on your list, so you may want to try that.

 

[ShadowBass]

As far as more variety in live foods, you could try ghost shrimp. That's what mine ate at the fish store. And you could try some other bugs/worms/grubs.

Plus, yeah, you can buy worms if it's too time consuming to dig them up. That's what I do.

And regarding pellets, mine won't pay attention to them. The most I've gotten him to do is put one in his mouth and spit out. I've actually taken to stuffing pellets into worms (Sounds cruel, but meh, they're getting chewed up/digested either way. and they were going to be impaled on a hook if I didn't buy 'em. Though it is kind of gross, lol.). So at least he's getting pellets, even if he's not eating them by choice. So I'm hoping eventually he'll get used to the taste and smell and I'll have more of a chance of him eating them since perhaps he'll be more likely to associate them with a food source.