On Saturday I brought home a beautiful ribbon eel. It's been at the LFS for about 2 months now and I made sure it was eating frozen foods before bringing it home. I know that ribbon eels are piscivores, so I was expecting that losing my 2 juvenile jawfish and bangaii cardinal was a real possibility. I haven't seen one of the jawfish since Sunday morning. I feel kind of bad about that, but the monetary cost isn't outrageous and that's the nature of the ocean.
But what I didn't expect is that the eel will make halfhearted attempts at nearly every fish in the tank. I knew they were poor sighted but I figured that it would at least ignore fish that are clearly too large to swallow. But it's been lunging at my chalk bass which are clearly too big to swallow. And during feeding time today it nearly bit my marine betta, which is obviously not a reasonable meal.
So what happens if it does bite something too big for it? Will it just kill it and ignore the body? Will it realize the mistake and let go? Can the eel live with any fish at all or is there any way to reduce aggression? Because if it was between all my small-medium fish and the eel I might just rehome everything but the marine betta and make it a dedicated pred tank with lionfish and scorpionfish. But if it's even a serious threat to even the betta then the eel has to go.
Also, is feeding silversides a bad idea? Because it takes them pretty readily (though it seems to have trouble with even pinky-size ones), but if training it to eat invert meat like shrimp and clam would make it less likely to attack fish I'd do that happily.
Here's a video of the beautiful guy shortly after I added it to the tank
But what I didn't expect is that the eel will make halfhearted attempts at nearly every fish in the tank. I knew they were poor sighted but I figured that it would at least ignore fish that are clearly too large to swallow. But it's been lunging at my chalk bass which are clearly too big to swallow. And during feeding time today it nearly bit my marine betta, which is obviously not a reasonable meal.
So what happens if it does bite something too big for it? Will it just kill it and ignore the body? Will it realize the mistake and let go? Can the eel live with any fish at all or is there any way to reduce aggression? Because if it was between all my small-medium fish and the eel I might just rehome everything but the marine betta and make it a dedicated pred tank with lionfish and scorpionfish. But if it's even a serious threat to even the betta then the eel has to go.
Also, is feeding silversides a bad idea? Because it takes them pretty readily (though it seems to have trouble with even pinky-size ones), but if training it to eat invert meat like shrimp and clam would make it less likely to attack fish I'd do that happily.
Here's a video of the beautiful guy shortly after I added it to the tank
