about my eel

[eelski]

My fimbriated eel, Lee, gets fed live food alot. plenty of damsels and chromis. frozen silversides also. right now there is a yellow damsel of some kind that has been in there over a week. the neon damsel just got ate after a week. a couple days ago he went a little nuts. i happened to look over and and it had my young picasso trigger in its jaws, then became pretty aggressive with my foxface. i fed her ghost shrimp once, 2 nice sized crawfish at the same time, she ate a coral beauty. i say she about 15 inches. i guess my question is...is that yellow damsel too small? a waist of energy to hunt? she sure would like to eat that trigger!!!

 

[grabbitt]

1) Wow. Expensive meal plan you've got her on, and
2) Damsels are pretty quick little guys.. If your eel isn't hungry enough, it's not going to want to put out the work to catch its food, but I'm betting when it's hungry enough, it's gonna do what it needs to in order to catch a meal.
This, of course, is just a guess...

 

[eelski]

this one happens to be the slowest and dumbest damsel yet. huge eyes tho. maybe those eyes are keeping him alive.......

 

[prk543]

It sounds like your eel is associating anything that swims with food. If the majority of the food your eel eats is live, it will continue to eat anything that swims in your tank. I would try to wean the eel off of live food, because as in the case of your trigger, it may continue to try and eat the fish you don't want it to eat.
This is a similar reasion why people should use feeding sticks and not your fingers to feed agressive fish, because if the fish associates your hand with food, it makes it difficult to do any work in your tank.
I hope this helps, and that you don't have any more heart stopping moments.
-prk543