Snowflake eel???

Pretty_Puffer20

Pretty_Puffer20

Reefing newb
Recently bought a baby snowflake eel and the store I bought him from said he eats mysis. He doesn't appear to be eating much at all. Tonight I fed him before bed and he appeared to eat more, but still not much. Any advice? And since he's a baby will he not eat much, or should he be eating more?

We have him in a 55 gal with lots of live rock and places for him to hide. We have 2 engineer gobies, 2 clown fish, a diamond goby, a ghost goby, a cleaner wrasse, a yellow tang, a tamini tang, roughly 6 crabs, and we had a sand sifting star, but after we got the tangs we stopped seeing him at all so we fear the tangs ate him...

Do you think the eel will eat any of the fish we have if he's not eating enough? Any and ALL information on taking of him would be great because I'd love to keep him!!!

We don't have any corals in our tank yet, but plan on it.
 
Eels are not reef safe, yes he will eat them. They also need huge tanks, as do your tangs, and I think you are already well stocked to say the least. I would take the eel and both the tangs back. And no, the tangs would not eat him, they are herbivores.
 
Tangs Do Eat meat, Well At Least My Yellow Tang does. I never actually would say he went hunting for meat though, more opportunistic. Your stock list is insane and I'm very liberal in fish stocking department. It is really hard for me to believe that all of those fish are actually living together and all haven't broken out with stress related ich. I wish you the best, your sst is probably hiding under a rock, very normal for them to dissappear from time to time.
 
Eels have a massive bio load as well so if you're bio filter is holding up to what you have now, that eel will throw it over the edge. I have a 55 as well and if youre params are 100% stable id love to hear how you did this.
 
mariobrothersleeve said:
Tangs Do Eat meat, Well At Least My Yellow Tang does. I never actually would say he went hunting for meat though, more opportunistic.
Click to expand...

That's more what I meant, I shouldbe clarified. They're naturally grazers, though and don't look for meat as a main source of food. I think that spirulina brine and mysis is actually recommended by some.
 
try offering him small pieces of scallop. and a bigger tank. my son had one and he loved the stuff. if he feels stressed from overcrowding or has to much compatition for food then he isnt going to come out and feed. also snowflakes get to be 3 ft. as he gets bigger everything in there except possibly the tangs are going to be on the menu. you would be better off with a golden pencil eel. they only get to be about a ft long and eat small inverts in the wild. reef safe does not mean fish safe. it usually means that it won't touch your corals and inverts. i've known a few people that had the pencil eels and they never touched anything. you have to feed them though. they don't really chase food down the way the fish will. they just stick their head out and wait
 
All of our fish interact fine. And we've worried about over crowding and stress, but there have never been any problems. This is our first tank so we do watch everything closely as well as ask plenty of questions before buying a fish.
We are aware that our tangs and the eel will outgrow the tank, but the store we go to (which we trust) advised us that they would be fine for at least a year if not longer (all of them are very young). We're looking into getting a bigger tank at the moment and keep a close eye on all of our fish and how they interact.
Thanks for the help. :thumbsup:
 
Hello
if you have baby moray eel you have to feed it like a baby
I had one a died recently due to an accident :(
ok
so
you are gonna take a needle and sewing thread and you are going to make kinda like a fishing rod
get jumbo mysis shrimps and put the shrimp in the needle and then go fish move the shrimp in his face and he will hunt for it, you have to feed it about 3 times a week and you have to do this until it learns to hunt the food and then hes going to eat from your hand

:( I miss my morena :cry:
 
If he doesn't like what you're feeding him try squid, never met a moray that would turn down a meal of calamari. ;) My wife turned the Tesselata that we had in the shop into a pet, lol. I came into the shop one day to find her with her hand bandaged, she was hand feeding him and he missed the squid strip and got finger. They have VERY poor eyesight so use a pair of forceps or stick to put the food in front of them or you risk a miss and them getting fingers.
 
Greenman said:
Eels have a massive bio load as well so if you're bio filter is holding up to what you have now, that eel will throw it over the edge. I have a 55 as well and if youre params are 100% stable id love to hear how you did this.
Click to expand...

For our filter we use a three story storage tote in a 10 gallon tank; the top layer has 6 filter pads in it and the second layer has 448ct of 1" bio balls with a 920gph at zero head pump and only pumps up 4ft. We hardly ever have to do water changes. Note we do not have any lights or coral yet either.
 
duromega said:
Hello
if you have baby moray eel you have to feed it like a baby
I had one a died recently due to an accident :(
ok
so
you are gonna take a needle and sewing thread and you are going to make kinda like a fishing rod
get jumbo mysis shrimps and put the shrimp in the needle and then go fish move the shrimp in his face and he will hunt for it, you have to feed it about 3 times a week and you have to do this until it learns to hunt the food and then hes going to eat from your hand

:( I miss my morena :cry:
Click to expand...
Thank you. This is probably the most helpful that I've read! We're looking for longer tongs or some type of anything that will help us feed him (I'll probably try the sewing needle idea, my boyfriend won't do it though). We're looking at getting squid too. He seems to eat the mysis, just the other fish get it first if he's not fast enough. I want to start feeding him at night. And three times a week even for a baby? Thanks so much again.
And I'm sorry about yours. Did he jump from the tank? Our little guy LOVES to try. We have acrylic lids, but he loves to splash at them and hit them. I'm afraid he'll jump out at one of the points where they bend over time...:(
 
Pretty_Puffer20 said:
For our filter we use a three story storage tote in a 10 gallon tank; the top layer has 6 filter pads in it and the second layer has 448ct of 1" bio balls with a 920gph at zero head pump and only pumps up 4ft. We hardly ever have to do water changes. Note we do not have any lights or coral yet either.
Click to expand...

What do you have to remove nitrates? Filter sounds great but it also sounds like a nitrate factory. Do you have any natural filtration like macro algae?
 
Greenman said:
What do you have to remove nitrates? Filter sounds great but it also sounds like a nitrate factory. Do you have any natural filtration like macro algae?
Click to expand...
We only have pink algae and everything reads perfectly fine on our tests. We never even had spikes of anything when our tank cycled. It's been up and running for at least six months, maybe longer...to be honest it practically runs itself. We still monitor it closely, but we barely have to do water changes.
 
You should be doing water changes weekly. They aren't to remove nitrates, but to replace all the minerls that get used up like strontium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc...
 
kbuser92 said:
You should be doing water changes weekly. They aren't to remove nitrates, but to replace all the minerls that get used up like strontium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc...
Click to expand...
i agree, your fish put waste in the water, not everything shows up in the tests. changing the water is like giving them fresh air. if you changing the water regularly. ie. every wk- every two wks, then you might find your eel is eating a lot better. you should be changing at least 10 % a time. thats only 5 and a half gallons on your tank. i would change once a wk. if you havent done a water change in a while[ months?] then you should change 15 or 20 g. you will probably find your fish seem in invigorated by the water change. i have to change 30 gal at a time and i do it every week to ten days.
 
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