Thinking of a Fire or Tire Track Eel

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marvinbaker;2463926; said:
i keep both. in seperate tanks. i find fire eels very picky eater (mine will only eat live river shrimp and live earthworm) and therefore don't tend to get as big as tyre tracks which i find will eat any food you give them! fire tracks can be stunning and as mine takes worm from hand mine knows he needs to come get worms from the front top part of the tank and so is permanently dancing out front for food. the tyre track spends all day entwined in a massive bit of wood i have for him and is more of a hunter when food is added.

bare bottom wouldn't concern me, no pipes or big interesting bits of bogwood is a definite no no for me unless you want your eel permanently winding itself around your inlet and outlet pipes. give it a proper home and you'll have a much more friendly, greedy eel to fatten up.

as a little teaser as to how big they get, look at the girth of the body on my tyre track and then you start guessing the length (and it's a lot bigger then 2 foot!!). the other fish is a 3" umbee for reference. and it resides in a 2 foot wide tank with no problems. i could keep it in a 12" wide tank and i reckon it still would have little problems.

definitely go for the tyre track as a starter eel if i were you.
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I must know how big this Tire track is man-
I got one over the 34+ inchmark-
Your bigger or smaller than that Sir....
 
Idealconcepts;2463783; said:
So I have been reading about eels the last few days on here and on a few other places. I have specifically been looking at the Fire eels and the Tire Track eels. I understand they are Freshwater, do not need salt, can eat smaller fish when they are larger and aren’t really aggressive to other fish. I have some decent size tanks they could be housed when they get larger, 180, 240, 300gal (these are all 2ft wide).

Is width of the tank that important for these guys since they both are known to get over 24 inches?

My largest tank has pool filter sand in it and my other tanks are bare with the outside bottom painted black, will bare bottom tanks affect the eels in a negative way?

With tank mates I have seen them with bichir’s and Aros, are they fine with Peacock Bass, Gars, and other fish as long as the eels are too big to be eaten by the other fish and the other fish are not overly aggressive?

Thanks in advance. :D
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I would not go with bare bottom, if you were to take that route, get lots of PVC tubes in there. Eels like to hide alot! Mine always burrowed in the sand.
 
id get a TT... i got both a tire track and a fire eel.. the tire track eel was 4inches when i got him about 7 months ago and now hes up to 13 inches.. my fire eel was about 6 inches when i got him but always was getting bacterial and/or fungal infections which made it really hard to take care of him.. he maybe only grew about 2 inches in 4 months since he was always sick and wouldnt eat.. eventully my fire eel jumped out from the tire track attacking it all the time..
 
Thanks everyone.

I picked up a 12-13 inch thick Fire Eel, but it got out of my quarrantine tank and dried up. That sucked.
 
put in the tank with pfs.i have my tt eel in my 100 gal tank with pfs and he loves it lol. i dont think the tt eel gets as wide as the fire eel cause mine is over a foot long but not as wide as most monster fire eels. oh and if you want cheap caves for your eel, get some pvc pipe and make a house for it.. that what i did.
 
I picked up a13-14 in tire track and might be getting a 17-18 in Fire. Have they been know to ever eat pellets? I have a large tank that has lots of hiding places and pfs but the fish I have in there are very wild when they eat and I feed them only pellets so I'm worried the two eels would never get any food. I won't move them from the quarantine tank for a few weeks in order to get them eating and use to the new water conditions.
 
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