brackish eel feeding pics

moraym

moraym

Active Member
Girlfriend snapped a couple of the guy eating.
He's really not a brackish eel anymore, he's been converted into full marine, but he just hasn't moved tanks yet into a saltwater-looking tank. He's getting a tank with LS and LR of course, but for now he's in the large gravel-laden brackish tank.
Anyways, here he is snacking on some krill:
 
moraym

moraym

Active Member
Another successful snap, you can see a few of the krill's stringy bits hanging out of the mouth:
 
moraym

moraym

Active Member
He's one of those common morays you see your LFS selling as freshwater eels. Well I got one of them ages ago when i had a fresh tank, couldn't get him to eat a single thing. As soon as I bumped him into a brackish tank, he began eating like a champ. Then as he matured (many eels spend their early years in brackish water, as do most "brackish" fish, and then go out to the marine environment as they age) I moved him slowly into a marine environment. Just finished recently, both he and my large green scat are now full marine.
There isn't much out there on "freshwater" eels, but as far as I can tell he's Echidna rhodochilus , or "freshwater white-cheeked moray". Hails from the Indo-west Pacific, Indonesia, and Phillippines regions. It actually very rarely enters freshwater, but LFS have sold it almost exclusively as freshwater, although recent years they have begun selling as brackish, which it will do well in for a couple years. The research I have done says it'll mainly accept live foods and only hits 13", whereas my guy eats Formula 1 cubes and frozen krill like its candy, and is 16-17" and still putting on some length.
Other possibilities: Gymnothorax tile or Gymnothorax polyuranodon.
 
chandler04

chandler04

Active Member
Now how do u go about converting one? Just slow adding of salt to the tank until you reach that point of specific gravity? Cool eel though. It would be nice to just have in a freshwater tank I suppose, unless they have to eventually be in brackish, and if it needs saltwater later on, then I can give it salt. Neat though. Can you convert all freshwater creatures? That would be cool to get a goldfish in a salt tank, lol. VERy amusing.
 
moraym

moraym

Active Member
Brackish fish have sharper coloration in saltwater. They are all essentially brackish temporarily, but in their adult lives swim further into marine environments.
My old brackish tank had two scats, spotted puffer, two cat sharks, and the eel. They were all three years old when I decided it was time to let them move on to the next stage in their life. Converting brackish fish to saltwater is fairly easy, you just need to set up a drip system to slowly drip saltwater into the system, raising the salinity by about .001 per hour. You could probably do it quicker but why risk it. Takes about a day.
With my guys, I just took a few cups of brackish water out each day and then put in marine water. I did it slowly like this just because I was too lazy to search through my equipment to pull together enough tubing to form a drip system into and out of the tank. The cup way took a few weeks, but worked, and it was easy. After selling one scat, puffer, and cat sharks
, I'm setting up the remaining scat and eel in a new tank.
As far as freshwater fish, no, I don't think more than a few can be converted successfully. Although goldfish do live a little better with a small amount of salt in their tanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top