Which book are you talking about - give the name of the book, author, and the publication year, the ISBN number and page number would also be helpful too. Here's the thing about spiny eels and books that have articles about them - a lot of the time, they're wrong.
Here's some examples (* - indicate wrong information given);
Simon & Schuster's Guide To Freshwater and Marine Aquarium Fishes
by Simon & Schuster inc.
English-Translation Copyright 1977
ISBN-13: 978-0-671-22809-5
ISBN-10: 0-671-22809-9
Pg. 88
Labeled as/Common Name given as: Spiny Eel
Scientific Name: Macrognathus aculeatus
*Picture Shown of: Macrognathus circumcinctus (Zig-Zag Spiny Eel)
Tropical Freashwater Aquarium Fish from A to Z
by Schliewen
English-Translation Copywrite 2005
ISBN-13: 978-0-7641-3056-4
ISBN-10: 0-7641-3056-0
Pg. 102
Labeled as/Common Name given as: Fire Spiny Eel
*Scientific Name: Mastacembelus favus
*Picture Shown: Mastacembelus favus
*and to top it all off, it says that it only grows to 28"
And Fishbase.org is a joke - I swear, it's the fish database equivalent to Wikipedia. Last week, they had Mastacembelus armatus common name as "[Tire track eel]" and Mastacembelus favus without a common name, this week they have Mastacembelus armatus with the common name "[Zig-zag eel]" and Mastacembelus favus with the common name "[Tire track eel]" now. If you do a cached search with google (Mar 27, 2008 05:34:02 GMT), the common names are the same now as they were then (don't know WHY they changed them around last week, and I swear they did) and you'd say they pages are the same, but on the cached page they list only 78 species instead of 80 species - as well as they've add 3 more species pictures to the top part as well. They've also have pictures of different species under different names as well, just have fun looking at Macrognathus aculeatus; not to mention that many of the pictures they show are labeled "Identification to be verified (ongoing)" - oh so professional don't you think.
