Feeding A Striped Peacock Eel?

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Conqueror

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Hi all,

I have a 55g with a moonlight gourami, a dwarf gourami, a pleco, a red oscar (6"ish) and a new addition, a 7-8" striped peacock eel. The LFS fed the eel on bloodworms, but I am unsure on how to feed them to the eel. I can take a pinch of thawed bloodworms and literally place them on the eel's nose (very calm fish!) and yet he won't touch them. I could try the turkey baster option I've heard about, but my main concern is keeping the Oscar away! If I just leave the worms on the bottom of the tank, the eel doesn't touch them.

I go to sleep and wake up, the worms are gone, but there's no telling whether the pleco or the oscar found them during the night instead of the eel. How should I go about feeding the eel and making sure he a) accepts the food and b, can get to it?

Thanks,

CQ
 
I think you'll get trouble with the oscar and the eel.The other fish seem ok.Peacock eels,striped or otherwise are very docile fish and yours won't compete with an oscar.
My peacock eel is also in a community tank.What i do is feed the fish with flake food first until they are looking full then put in the bloodworms which my eel then eats off the bottom.I think your oscar will freak him out as they are boisterous and can be aggressive and greedy.
 
I think you'll get trouble with the oscar and the eel.The other fish seem ok.Peacock eels,striped or otherwise are very docile fish and yours won't compete with an oscar.
lol, that's not been my experience so far. The eel is plenty aggressive towards the oscar. He may not be competing for food necessarily, but the oscar is now sporting several (minor) battle scars inflicted by a pissed-off eel. I still can't tell if the eel is eating though... if I turn out the lights right after dropping the bloodworms in, they're gone in the morning, but who knows who ate them?

CQ
 
i hand-feed my fire eel frozen bloodworm cubes - have to hide the cube inside my hand or my severum/firemouth/barbs swipe them all. but the eel knows the drill so swims straight to the hand and takes them. If the eel isnt showing any interest in them it makes it a bit trickier. How long has the eel been in the tank? mine didnt feed for over a week after i moved him, till he'd settled down a bit.
 
Hello!

I recently got a peakcok eel that is around 4-5 inches..in a 15 gallon tank (it has no other fish in it) with perfect temperature, PH, etc readings...

i have had it for 2 weeks but it has not been eating anything because the food i put in just molds and stays there..earlier this week, ick appeared but i have gotten medicine and have been using it...

i tried forcefeeding it with bloodworms today, because it started to look very weak...what should i do??

i have been using bloodworms (which are the only worms i could get around here), ghost shrimp (live), fish pellets and flakes!


Please help!!!!
 
i didnt think my peacock was eating until i saw him a few days ago...i thought he was dead or escaped or something. just use a turkey baster and squirt the bloodworms in his direction.

if you have gravel, that works a lot better because the uneaten bloodworm falls in the cracks of the gravel and the eel has amazing scent to find them. i imagine this is how mine has lasted so long w/o me seeing it eat
 
feed your eel Rosie Red feeder fish my eels love them to death or ghost shrimp. the rosie reds are cheap 25 for $1 at Pet supplies plus. and pets mart has ghost shrimp for .33 each
 
No, no, no! Don't do this!

Spiny eels are notoriously prone to bacterial infections. Cheap feeder fish would be extremely bad foods for them. Ghost shrimp are okay, provided they're gut-loaded first because of how much thiaminase they contain. If you feed any predatory fish just shrimp and cyprinids (e.g., rosy-reds, goldfish, minnows) you can guarantee the fish will eventually develop a vitamin B1 deficiency. Very serious and very difficult to cure once symptoms are apparent.

Spiny eels love live earthworms. With time, they'll take wet-frozen and fresh foods of all sorts, including small pieces of seafood and tilapia fillet. But they are slow feeders, and you cannot keep spiny eels with anything likely to feed from the substrate. The best approach is to keep the spiny eel ALONE until it is feeding, and once it has become tame, gradually introduce other fish.

Most spiny eels either starve to death or jump out and die that way.

Cheers, Neale

feed your eel Rosie Red feeder fish my eels love them to death or ghost shrimp. the rosie reds are cheap 25 for $1 at Pet supplies plus. and pets mart has ghost shrimp for .33 each
 
I have had quite a bit of expierience with striped peacock eels. I've had two of them now, the first I had for about seven months, I just lost him a couple of days ago :/ so here's what I can tell you.
When I brought my first one home I never saw him eat, ever, it was kind of a competition between him and my amazon puffers for the blood worms but even when they were left on the ground for him he wouldn't touch them. So I started to feed the puffers with other food until they were full (easy to tell with puffers) and then I would put half of the cube of bloodworms in the tank, if he didn't eat them then the puffers would a little later and then I would wait two days, eventually he will get hungry enough to where he will eat almost anything you put in the tank. Before I knew it he was eating the whole cube of brine shrimp to himself. He was so peaceful :] I loved him.
I had a major ich outbreak a couple of weeks ago and lost all my puffers and my eel and my bgk, I lost my whole stock. So I made sure my tank was okay, and I just brought home another yesterday. He's about 7 inches, very thick and he still refuses to eat, I think it's just that he's stressed about being in a new tank by himself (he was in a tank with about 7 or 8 other eels at the pet store) and so I think he just needs to get to the point of where he's really hungry to start eating. I plan to put another or two in there.
 
Hi all,

I have a 55g with a moonlight gourami, a dwarf gourami, a pleco, a red oscar (6"ish) and a new addition, a 7-8" striped peacock eel. The LFS fed the eel on bloodworms, but I am unsure on how to feed them to the eel. I can take a pinch of thawed bloodworms and literally place them on the eel's nose (very calm fish!) and yet he won't touch them. I could try the turkey baster option I've heard about, but my main concern is keeping the Oscar away! If I just leave the worms on the bottom of the tank, the eel doesn't touch them.

I go to sleep and wake up, the worms are gone, but there's no telling whether the pleco or the oscar found them during the night instead of the eel. How should I go about feeding the eel and making sure he a) accepts the food and b, can get to it?

Thanks,

CQ
 
I am a expert when it comes to cichlids, eels, and most tropical fish. If you need to feed an peacock eel, these are the things that work best. For one you can use ghost shrimp, which are hard to find in the off season. This trick works best for all fake eels, go to your local grocer and purchase some frozen uncooked saltwater shrimp. Take a knife and cut a piece of shrimp for the size of the mouth you are trying to feed. Keep in mind if you are feeding a peacock eel, the piece should be really small, because they have the smallest mouths. After cutting the piece of shrimp take it and bury it into the gravel bed or whatever bottom you have in your aquarium. By doing this it will keep the other little greedy fish from eating it, and since eels are very good at digging and they have an awesome since of smell they will be able to retrieve it. This is the way the eels are eating in the wild, remember with fish you should always try to feed them as they eat in the wild.
 
I also have a 55g with african chiclids and a peacock and tiretrack eel.  To feed the peacock the trick I use is to put the food in a flower vase and lower it in the water.  He is the only one that can fit in the neck of the vase to get the food.
 
So exactly what I do is:
 
  • Find a clear glass vase with a long narrow neck.  Maybe 6 inches long and 1/2" diameter.
  • Tie fishing line around the neck.
  • Put food, frozen, or live,  I use black worms or a variety of frozen food, and put it in the vase.
  • Now lower the vase to the bottom of the tank and the eel will quickly find the food and will enter the vase to feed.  I use a clear glass vase so I can watch him.
  • I have a bobber attched to the end of the fishing line that floats at the top.
  • When the food is gone I retrieve the vase for the next feeding.
  • Make sure the bottom of the vase is big enough so the fish can turn around to get out.
 
 
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