I always offer chopped frozen shrimp, fish, etc but no cigar. all it eats is frozen bloodworms. should i starve it and repeat this process over? how long am i looking at for this to work? it's still a baby at around 9". dont want to start on live worms. i feel it'll just get much more harder than it already is after that.
questions regarding finicky fire eel
- Thread starter EatMaiSeeds
- Start date
I have tried various frozen foods and the only one I had success with was bloodworms. But IMO, bloodworms are terrible for a fish's health. So for the majority of my fire eel's life it has been fed giant mealworms. And has been growing an healthy on them. (Mine is about 13")
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i see. thats what im probably going to have to do. was hoping for some advice from ppl who weaned them onto frozen fish and prawn.
I posted this in another thread this morning, it may help you. You just need to be patient.
My 16" Fire Eel will only eat from my hand.
There seem to be a few questions on how to train them to eat from your hands. This is what I did.
When I got mine I made him a hiding place from 50mm PVC pipe and pushed it into the sand and covered it with rocks. He immediately went into it and it has been his home for two years now. I personally think you need to give them a hiding spot that they really feel comfortable in first.
I then got some live earth worms. A fairly small species of worm about 3" - 4" long. I took a syringe with about 15" of air hose on the end. I then sucked an earth worm into the end of the hose and pushed it into the eels cave then squeezed the syringe to get the worm out of the pipe. I did this for a few nights and just left a few worms in his cave and left him alone for a while after.
After a few days he began to realize that whenever that pipe came to his cave good things came out of it, so he started coming to the pipe and grabbing every worm as it came out of the pipe.
After a few more days he became very comfortable feeding like this so i held the pipe a little further from his cave every time I fed him and eventually he was feeding out in the open.
I shortened the the pipe daily over the next few feeds and eventually he was so comfortable being near my hands that I could feed him by hand easily. In the beginning he would only take live earth worms but now anything that comes from my hands is food as far is he is concerned and he gets live earth worms and prawns sliced into strips.
Just be patient, they are very timid creatures but once they trust you they are very rewarding to keep. I can run my hand under my ones belly and he doesn't even try and get away.
I keep mine with Malawi's and some times they snatch the food from my hand before he gets it so I now hold the food between my thumb and middle fingers and he knows that he has to put his nose in there to get food. This stops the other fish from seeing it and they also dont know how to get to it.
My 16" Fire Eel will only eat from my hand.
There seem to be a few questions on how to train them to eat from your hands. This is what I did.
When I got mine I made him a hiding place from 50mm PVC pipe and pushed it into the sand and covered it with rocks. He immediately went into it and it has been his home for two years now. I personally think you need to give them a hiding spot that they really feel comfortable in first.
I then got some live earth worms. A fairly small species of worm about 3" - 4" long. I took a syringe with about 15" of air hose on the end. I then sucked an earth worm into the end of the hose and pushed it into the eels cave then squeezed the syringe to get the worm out of the pipe. I did this for a few nights and just left a few worms in his cave and left him alone for a while after.
After a few days he began to realize that whenever that pipe came to his cave good things came out of it, so he started coming to the pipe and grabbing every worm as it came out of the pipe.
After a few more days he became very comfortable feeding like this so i held the pipe a little further from his cave every time I fed him and eventually he was feeding out in the open.
I shortened the the pipe daily over the next few feeds and eventually he was so comfortable being near my hands that I could feed him by hand easily. In the beginning he would only take live earth worms but now anything that comes from my hands is food as far is he is concerned and he gets live earth worms and prawns sliced into strips.
Just be patient, they are very timid creatures but once they trust you they are very rewarding to keep. I can run my hand under my ones belly and he doesn't even try and get away.
I keep mine with Malawi's and some times they snatch the food from my hand before he gets it so I now hold the food between my thumb and middle fingers and he knows that he has to put his nose in there to get food. This stops the other fish from seeing it and they also dont know how to get to it.
Mine comes right out for his bloodworms so maybe this will work. Thanks
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Mine went from frozen blood worms to small earth worms. Then to nightkrawlers, now all he eats is market shrimp
What i did was starve him fore 10 days and start him on mussel (finelee chopt) he took it first time
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