My Baby

[medicguy90]

Hello all. I am really new to brackish tanks. I was at my local LFS and fell in love with a freshwater eel. I think they had him as a snowflake. Well me and my partner had set up our 30 gal as fresh but was there and they told us how to change it to brackish. well long story short we got the eel about a month or so ago. He is doign great btw. Here are my problems.

When we first got him we was told many different things by different people that work there. We where told that krill was fine to feed him and that all he needed. There did not really say how much salt and stuff. They sell fresh DI/Ro water and salt water the same. Well we done our water change last night. I went in today and found out that the SG is really low. I was asking how to raise it in a safe way for our baby. Yes we love the eel very much. LOL My water test are off and there are Nitrates or Nitrites. So I asked if I coudl do another water change or what I should do. He said that I could but then I woudl kill of to much good bateria. But if I left him in there then that could harm him. So he said it was a lose lose thing. I am taking it back tues to get re tested.

Food well I am going to get him silver slides next and change it up with the krill. I kind of want to get him some live crustations. sorry for spelling.

I was told that I could have some snails and crabs but the guy at the store told me that they would not live and i just needed to read up. Well this makes me mad cause if you are going to sell something know something about it. LOL

So can someone please help me with how to raise my salt to a healthy level and what foods and things for him. He loves it when we feed him. I think we was over feeding because he eats one meal a day. It is small ones but he seems to do better. Oh and what clean up crew to help with waste?

We tried to have other fish but he ate them. We need to find bigger fish to put with him so it adds color to the tanks but he is prioity in tank.

Sorry for making it so long. thanks for ur help.
BRock

 

[dilbert]

I know nothing about eels but if you could find out what species your eel is than maybe someone can tell you more.

To mix up a so-called "low-end" brackish water of SG (specifig gravity) 1.005 that is roughly equivalent to a salinity of 6 ppt what is roughly 3 parts freshwater and 1 part saltwater, you would need 10 grams of marine salt (from an LFS) for 1 liter of water. Tesco has digital kitchen scales measuring in units of a gram for 12 GBP.

You can measure the salinity with a mechanical hydrometer (about 10 to 15 GBP), an optical refractometer (about 50 GBP) or a conductivity meter for saltwater aquaristic (about 30 GBP from digital-meters.com).

I would also try to get the most important water test kits. Those are are first Ammonia and Nitrite, as both are highly toxic, and then ph, Nitrates, maybe hardness, too. You could ask your LFS still for water testing, but at least Ammonia and Nitrite I would doublecheck on my own. At least with shop that tells different things all the time eitherway. If you ask them for water testing, try to get the measured figures, as simply "is ok" is a bit vague.

As long as you don't know your water parameters exactly, I wouldn't think on buying new fish, as the throughcome of your eel should have priority.

When you do a water change, then almost no "beneficial bacteria" should be affected as 99% of them live in the filter, in the garvel, the decorations, and the glass walls. The most of them live in the filter. That has to run always as if you switch it off for longer than a few hours those bacteria in there will start dying that means the will become less as they oxygen flowing through the filter to keep on living.
If your LFS doesn't know this and tells you not to change the water because of those bacteria then this is really a reason to be worried about.

Changes in salinity are normally not that bad as high figures in Ammonia and Nitrite. Most brackish water changes salinity all the time, for example with the tide in estuaries, and even marine saltwater changes its salinity in shallow reefs on the coast line. If they had the eel in freshwater than it's presumably a species that lives in both, freshwater and brackish water. Even then, brackish water helps keeping freshwater fungi etc down.

 

[nmonks]

Dilbert has covered a lot of ground there, so all I'm going to do is add a couple of additional points.

At the very least these 'freshwater' morays need SG 1.005, and in less than that they tend to lose their appetite over time, and eventually just die for no other apparent reason. Ideally, you want to be keeping them at SG 1.008-1.012, perhaps fluctuating a little between these extremes with each water change. They can also be kept in marine tanks, but they aren't really marine fish in the wild so there's probably no real advantage to keeping them thus. In brackish water tanks they can live for 10+ years.

The species you have is likely Gymnothorax tile. It's a variable species, but typically juveniles are brownish-pink with yellow spots, becoming a more uniform colour as they mature, the spots becoming relatively small and faint. Maximum size in aquaria seems to be around 60 cm.

Gradually changing a freshwater tank to SG 1.005 is easy, and the filter bacteria will adapt readily. Do a series of water changes every weekend, replacing 25% of the tank with water at SG 1.005. After a month or two you should be at SG 1.005, and the filter will be fine. After that, do the same basic thing, but this time add only slightly more salty water. Say, SG 1.006 for the first 4 weeks, then SG 1.007 for the next 4, and so on. Each time, keep testing the nitrites to make sure the filter is happy.

Gymnothorax spp. moray eels are primarily fish-eaters in the wild, and lack the flat teeth of Echidna spp. morays for crushing shelly prey. So silversides and lancefish, plus unshelled prawns and mussels, are definitely the way to go in terms of food. This also explains why keeping this species with tankmates is difficult. Some people have had success keeping them in mixed species tanks with other robust carnivores, but on the whole it's probably wisest not to do so unless you have another tank you can move the fish to if something goes wrong.

In any case, feeding small meals is best. Morays hunt by smell, and one common mistake people make is to add so much food the smell fills the tank and the moray is effectively blinded. Be careful if you hand feed this fish: like all morays it is basically blind as a bat, and its teeth, while not venomous, are sharp and potentially dangerous. Infections commonly set in when people are bitten by morays.

You don't need "clean-up crew" in this tank. Clean-up crew is something required exclusively in reef tanks where manual cleaning of the aquarium would damage the corals. In every other aquarium, it is simply easier and more effective to clean the tank manually. In a brackish water tank, under-stocking is actually quite a good idea, because it keeps down the nitrates, minimising your need for water changes, so saving on the cost of salt. If your tank needs colour, I'd opt for inanimate things like plastic plants.

Hope this helps, Neale

 

[Marine/Freshwater?]

Read the link by my signature: "My Article on Brackish Eels"


Hi I have the same species as you! Very nice fish. Do not get your water tested at a petstore. They do not no what the water parameters for your eel are. They like an elevated Ph. Ideally for your moray I would go with a salinity of 1.014-1.018. Vary it occasionaly. As far as food goes, i make my own food. See my post on moray food. Also do not worry about your moray biting you. They cant hurt you. If your responsible enough you should never get bitten. I am kind of upset that I trained my moray so well. He does not act natural. He ignores live 1/2 inch shad i give him. He prefers that i give him food. He does not even bother the shrimp I have in there. He's really cute though, whenever I am doing anything he is always has to be right under my hand. Dont think it is so cute now that he is 22 inches. He was only 7.5 inches when I bought him.(He He Humble beginings...)

 

[medicguy90]

Thanks everyone for replying. I do have the G.Tile. he is about a foot and half long. I read someones thing on food and might try it out. I am trying to get my water is alittle more salty. I done another 10 gal. water change. I also added live rock to the tank so he would have a more natural home. He loves it. he went exploring it and then has not came out. he pokes his head to to see what u doing but that is it.