Fire Eel

[cjohnston]

Thanks very much for advice, I did think once a week was a bit strange and I had been trying with blood worm every couple of days.

I did try and trick him and gave him frozen this time. He tried a couple of bits and promptly spat them out. I will try again today, but do not want to leave him without food just to get him to eat live. I suppose I could just keep trying.

Hi,

How often do you offer food? Somebody has advised once a week, is that how often you feed yours I gave the live food under my local fish suppliers advice, I could try frozen again.

the mistake i think i made with fire eels is panicking about them not eating and offerieng live foods to soon then not being able to wein them off it.have you seen my eel feeding video in the pic section

Depending on the size of any eel I feed them the apropriate amount of food once every 2 days. I think that feeding them once a week is a VERY bad choice. It may not die etc. but it will not get the required nutrients and energy from the food it consumes because there is so little of it. once every 2 days id normally a good guideline.

Also eels will willingly accept frozen foods, they just need to get used to the fact that it is food.

 

[cane76]

i did not advise you to feed it once a week,well i didnt mean to

 

[ringham]

i did not advise you to feed it once a week,well i didnt mean to

cjohnston was advised to feed once a week by someone else and I am positive that he didn't mean u, so don't worry about it

 

[cichlidcrazy]

Hi cjohnston

Was just wondering how you are getting on with feeding your eel have you tried river shrimp yet they normaly dont hang around when that goes in the tank i feed mine live and hand feed defrosted ones let us know how you are getting on.

cane76 have you tried frozen shrimp yet if so did he take it i find they smell alot and he picks up the sent as soon as it hits the water.
I have tried to keep the shrimp in a tank but they always seem to flake out on me do yours stay alive for long as i would love to breed them in a spare tank.

 

[cane76]

i have not tried freezing them yet i get river shrimp every thursday so im trying friday.the shrimp only last 2-3 days tops i dont know why they die so quickly i feed them blood worm too

 

[jasonskillz]

i only feed mine frozen worms
seems like its not too picky
but now everytime its about feeding time for my eels my gourami starts to hover around that area
smart thing keeps on stealing the eels food

 

[ringham]

I have recently had a break through with my smaller fire eel.

The fire eel that uis about 11-12" has started chomping on prawns like there is no tomorrow. This is a fantastic thing because he used to be a bloodworm-aholic. Also if you feed prawn to any fish the pink in the prawns makes them go red. For example I have a pair of mozambican mouth brroders and I feed them prwans and they are normally a pale yellow but mine have a red head and a red tail.

This means thet the colouration in the smaller fire eel should improve his red part. The smaller fire eels has always been the least colourful but hopefully they will soon match eachother.

Do any of you guys feed prawns?

You can get 1kg of prawns for £5 at Iceland

 

[cane76]

buy one get on free too aint it i go through bags and bags of em all my big fish love them.but my fire eel wont touch them hes a awkward bar****

 

[cichlidcrazy]

I have a friend who has 2 fire eels in there malawi set up and they love prawns mine wont touch them i feed all my fish chopped prawn and chopped musscles as the fish love it and its cheap.

 

[jasonskillz]

arent prawns shrimp?
i see no difference in the pictures

 

[ringham]

Normally shrimp are very small (up to 1cm) and prawns are a quite a few centimenters long.

I moved the smaller fire eel into his new bigger tank with my 18" fire eel and he all of a sudden loved eating prawns. The largest is still a loodworm fanatic, but do you think that it was just changing his home or what? I really don't know why he started liking them can any of you think of owt? (i'm not complaining though lol).

If I can fuigure out what made him change then maybe I will be able to get my largest eat prawns

 

[cichlidcrazy]

How did the 2 eels get on maybe with a larger eel in the tank made him think that the food belongs to him and he had to make do with the food for the fish. just a thought

 

[cane76]

i bet it just tried them and liked them. was it more hungry than usual?i mean was you staving it trying to get it to accept them?i think mine would rather starve to death than to try dead food

 

[jasonskillz]

$5 for 1kg of live, frozen, or dried prawn?

 

[ringham]

It was £5 for 1kg of frozen prans.

Because I hand feed all 3 of my eels ta are all n te same tank there isn't really any agro over food. There is soe however when it come to territiory but nothing at all to worry about. I wasn't sure wether or not 2 of the same species would be okay and they ae both females (I think). Both of them are dead fat (not literally lol) but to start with my hands were covred in blodworm so i think that he prawn must have smelt of bloodworms. Anyway once he tried it i think that he must have liked them