The Garden Eel adventure begins now...

airmotive · Jun 12, 2016

So The Reef aquarium shop in Indianapolis has been housing several garden eels for going on six months. I've been setting up my Deep Blue 70 with the anticipation of housing garden eels at some point.

Today, three spotted garden eels came home with me.

I'll do my best to treat this as a sort of blog. There's precious little practical info on garden eels in the aquarium; I'm hoping to add one more data point.

Stay tuned...

Duke4Life · Jun 12, 2016

Very neat! And Congrats!

Tahoe61 · Jun 12, 2016

Would be great to see what type of system you're housing them in.

airmotive · Jun 13, 2016

I have a 70 gallon Deep Blue Rimless, lit by two Kessil 360Ws and churned by pair of MP40s mounted on the back wall.
The aquarium was set up to effectively be two very different systems in one tank.
I've been diving in Belize and this is were I got my inspiration from. In the coral reefs in Belize, there would be sandy channels, almost like riverbeds, that flowed through the coral reefs. Some of these channels could be 30+ feet deep. On both sides of these channels would be walls of coral which varied the deeper you went. Near the top was brightly lit and rough, turbulent flow. Down in the channels the flow was steady and laminar. I suppose these are the paths the outgoing tides take, and leave behind these rivers of sand. Regardless, they make for excellent scuba diving and you can see a lot of diversity while descending along the canal wall or while swimming along the sand channels themselves.

So my tank is set up to be rocky and turbulent on one side (right side), sandy and laminar on the other(left side). The central overflow on the Deep Blue makes a nice dividing line, and some strategically placed rockwork does the rest. There's a little bit of cross flow between the sides, and all the creatures are free to go back and forth. The MP40 on the sandy side is set to a steady 30% flow. It is positioned midway between the left edge and the overflow, and about 1/3 of the way from the top. This flow pattern tends to keep the deep sand bed on that side of the tank pushed towards the back of the tank. The MP40 on the rocky side is set to full reef crest. Everything overflows into a remote sump in the garage where all the equipment is, along with a DSB refugium.

Most of the tank's inhabitants prefer the rocky side, which I was counting on. 4 RBTAs (started as one) with a pair of black ocellaris clowns, a couple green barred gobies, green clown gobies, a few green chromis and a yellow tank. Some cleaner and sexy shrimp, various crabs and eventually a couple clams.

I'm using fine oolite white sand between 3-5 inches deep on the left, and bare bottom up to ~1' deep on the right. Yes, getting the flow settled so you don't create a sand storm can be challenging. On the sandy side, I have positioned two rows of tall thin rocks that tend to channel the flow and keeps all the sand in place. After the first few weeks of getting everything tuned in, I've not had to re-arrange sand in nearly six months.

So that's the basic arrangement. The eels have been in the tank less than a day. More on that later...

revhtree · Jun 13, 2016

Cool! Any photos yet?

tj w · Jun 15, 2016

Sounds neat, would love to see photos as well.

Baby Ray · Jun 15, 2016

revhtree said:
Cool! Any photos yet?

tj w said:
Sounds neat, would love to see photos as well.

+1
Sounds like a great plan and I hope you are successful. I have always been fascinated with those little guys

Salty.Reefer · Jun 15, 2016

Very interesting. Can't wait to see pictures!

airmotive · Aug 23, 2016

Well...an update.
I had typed up a long dissertation on my iPad about the first month of the garden eels adventure...which promptly disappeared when I updated my OS. :-/

So, I'll summarize....
Let's debunk some of the "tribal knowledge" I came across while studying up on these critters: Garden eels are not strictly diurnal. Nor do they stay in their holes once settled. I started with three eels. At week #4, two of the eels got out of the tank, one night apart. Both exited at night, after lights out. We found one in the morning. The next morning we found the other. Very upsetting.
Before that, I found the eels to have settled in nicely. They eagerly accepted flake food, any frozen variety as well as live brine. They seemed more keen on flake, and would make much more effort to snag a passing flake than anything else. Before feeding, I would dial the MP40 on their side of the tank back to minimum, and allow the current to carry food down to them. Trying to drop sinking pellets near them always resulted in them retracting back into their holes. I would also have to feed the side of the tank opposite the eels first, so that the other inhabitants would be drawn to that side. The yellow tang is always a flurry of activity at feeding time and would cause the eels to retract into their holes if nearby.

Then, two weeks later, Eel #3 disappeared. We looked everywhere...on the floor, in the filters ...I even probed the DSB in my sump in the off chance that he went into the filter sock, escaped that and made a home in the sump. No sign of him. I chalked it up to either one of the RBTAs had a spaghetti dinner, or perhaps on of my dogs developed a taste for floor sushi.
Totally Bummed.

Then 4 days ago, I see two little eyes peeking up through the sand.
Sure enough...there's #3.
I have no idea where or how, but for the last month or so, #3 has remained completely hidden, but aparently alive and well. Of course, the following day he was gone and I've not seen him since.
Perhaps I'll give them one more try in the future. I want to see how much I can learn from #3 before committing.
Would having a lid on the tank help? I'm not sure it would. Perhaps a lip around the edge of the tank. But I don't think they're jumpers. With such a thin body, nothing short of a hermetic seal would completely contain them. When out in the water (before burrowing) they only swam backwards, and only in what seemed to be 'full panic's mode. As soon as their tails touched the sand, they burrowed and were gone within one second.

One thought I did have...the cabinet below my aquarium is lit with a small LED light that is always one. It is possible that the eels burrowed all the way down to the bottom of the tank, saw that light at night, and were disoriented in thinking the bottom of the tank was actually the surface of the water...resulting in the night time drop to the carpet. Not sure. Just a thought.

So anyway, my apologies for the slow update.

Baby Ray · Aug 23, 2016

Well, I am sorry to hear about the first two eels

I would defiantly put a lid on the tank just to be safe. Nothing bad can come from a lid so why not

I know fuge LED light thing could be true but I don't know. Could to maybe paint the bottom of the tank black just to be safe.

Shaun Sweeney · Dec 19, 2016

airmotive said:
I have a 70 gallon Deep Blue Rimless, lit by two Kessil 360Ws and churned by pair of MP40s mounted on the back wall.
The aquarium was set up to effectively be two very different systems in one tank.
I've been diving in Belize and this is were I got my inspiration from. In the coral reefs in Belize, there would be sandy channels, almost like riverbeds, that flowed through the coral reefs. Some of these channels could be 30+ feet deep. On both sides of these channels would be walls of coral which varied the deeper you went. Near the top was brightly lit and rough, turbulent flow. Down in the channels the flow was steady and laminar. I suppose these are the paths the outgoing tides take, and leave behind these rivers of sand. Regardless, they make for excellent scuba diving and you can see a lot of diversity while descending along the canal wall or while swimming along the sand channels themselves.

So my tank is set up to be rocky and turbulent on one side (right side), sandy and laminar on the other(left side). The central overflow on the Deep Blue makes a nice dividing line, and some strategically placed rockwork does the rest. There's a little bit of cross flow between the sides, and all the creatures are free to go back and forth. The MP40 on the sandy side is set to a steady 30% flow. It is positioned midway between the left edge and the overflow, and about 1/3 of the way from the top. This flow pattern tends to keep the deep sand bed on that side of the tank pushed towards the back of the tank. The MP40 on the rocky side is set to full reef crest. Everything overflows into a remote sump in the garage where all the equipment is, along with a DSB refugium.

Most of the tank's inhabitants prefer the rocky side, which I was counting on. 4 RBTAs (started as one) with a pair of black ocellaris clowns, a couple green barred gobies, green clown gobies, a few green chromis and a yellow tank. Some cleaner and sexy shrimp, various crabs and eventually a couple clams.

I'm using fine oolite white sand between 3-5 inches deep on the left, and bare bottom up to ~1' deep on the right. Yes, getting the flow settled so you don't create a sand storm can be challenging. On the sandy side, I have positioned two rows of tall thin rocks that tend to channel the flow and keeps all the sand in place. After the first few weeks of getting everything tuned in, I've not had to re-arrange sand in nearly six months.

So that's the basic arrangement. The eels have been in the tank less than a day. More on that later...

The "two tanks in one" idea is real cool. I might try something like that after refurbishing my old tank.

mort · Dec 19, 2016

I kept some of these in a 4x2ft seahorse display. I agree with what you have written above with the exception ours didn't take flake or pellets.
The tank had sand areas 8" deep at one end where the eels tended to live and a spray bar return at the other which went the whole width of the tank and created a laminar flow. We also used a powerhead on this side.

They moved burrows all the time and the easiest way I found to find them was to turn off the flow and look from above where you could see the circular openings. Some seemed incredibly shy but would come out if you backed off (it was in a shop so pretty busy) but I never saw them all out at once. We covered the tank at night as we lost one to begin with but none since covering. None jumped during the day. The tank bottom was clear with the sump lit at night and we didn't experience the same problems you have but perhaps it was because the sand was deeper. I believe they are very similar to jaw fish in that they can easily be spooked if they don't have enough vertical depth in their burrow. Ours were around 12" long and we did add more sand overtime to incense the depth to a little over 8" but ran out of water column above them (about 10").
There were about 15 to begin with and around 10 or so confirmed a year or so later. I believe the key was as you stated laminar flow bringing the food to them but also a quiet tank, appropriate food, lots of sand and plenty of luck.