EEL in a 12

SDhky

In Memoriam
I just saw my friends tank, he put a baby snowflake eel in a 12 gallon. I told him how crazy this was but he didnt budge. how long can he keep the eel in there? should the baby (8") even be in there now?
 
The eel needs to be removed even now. Way too small for a snowflake and the amount of waste it'll produce will be too great for that tank.
 
^Agreed! Your friend is going to off that snowflake... probably sooner than later. Ask him if he would try to keep a small dog in a shoebox?... cause essentially that is what he is doing with the eel. If he wants to keep it he needs to get it in a bigger tank asap. If you have a bigger tank why dont you keep it for him while he gets things worked out? Good luck.
 
if he takes it out, where can he put it?
an 8" snowflake is a little pencil critter, it will hold him for a few months.
i mean what if he was kept in a 10g QT for a month or 6 weeks, isnt that the same thing?
people see when things dont fit anymore, so im sure once this thing starts growing he will upgrade to a larger tank...havent we all upgraded to accomodate a growing fish?

and no, its not the same as a puppy in a shoe box for christs sake.
how can you compare a puppy to an eel?
 
Maybe if this was a 20L I'd agree it would work for a few months, but no, this is a 12 gallon. That's not enough for a snowflake. I wouldn't even quarantine one in that. 8" of fish on a 12 gallon bioload isn't going to work out well for anyone.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10455249#post10455249 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by LukFox
Maybe if this was a 20L I'd agree it would work for a few months, but no, this is a 12 gallon. That's not enough for a snowflake. I wouldn't even quarantine one in that. 8" of fish on a 12 gallon bioload isn't going to work out well for anyone.

20L = 5 gallons, i imagine you meant 20 gallons :p

when were talking about an 8" snowflake you have to realize this thing is pencil thin! it has a tiny head and tiny belly.
you cant compare it to lets say an 8" trigger or an 8" tang.
a baby snowflake has no mass yet.
the bioload isnt going to be that insane at this point, in the future yes, but not right now.
by removing it now will stress it out and probably kill it.
leave it for a few short months then move it to a larger tank
 
20L = 20 long ;) as far as I've seen it used. Bigger foot print.

I'd disagree, though. My dwarf moray isn't much bigger and can down quite a bit of food. On my system I don't think she adds too much, but things could get messy in a 12 gallon system, imo.
 
well it is his friend and not the poster, so most likely theres nothing that can be done. after all, think of all the stuff that goes on that we dont know of.
im sure its not the first time and it surely wont be the last. if his friend wants to move it then he will, if not then oh well, life goes on. i wont lose any sleep over it.
ever look at youtube vidoes? theres some sick animal stuff on there.
theres a video where a guy adapted his saltwater snowflake to totally fresh water living with fancy goldfish! even i cringe at that one lol
but what are ya gonna do, thats life
 
Oh believe me I know. It's just if it's possible the poster has some power in changing the friend's mind, then I'll gladly give my two cents.
 
There's nothing wrong with keeping a baby snowflake in a nursery tank like a 10 or 20 gallon tank as long as you make 40-50% water changes once a week or so. I have a snowflake and chainlink in a 10 gallon nursery tank doing great and growing. They only eat 1 krill each day, and they are best buddies and hardly ever move out from under their LR unless they are hungry.

I will graduate them to a 20 , then 55, then 120, then into my 300 in due time, but they are so small right now that I have to feed them with a little straw. You CAN do it, but just make the water changes, and have a decent nutrient exportation method in place.
 
feed a varied diet
squid, mussles, clams, shrimp, scallops
krill and fish(silver sides) should only be offered as a treat
foods can be soaked in vitamins

improper diet will lead to their death and is more hazardous than a small tank
people dont realize that, most people go on and preach about tank size and fail to mention poor diet is the number one fatality of our marine critters
you can have a 300 gallon tank for a snowflake but if its given the wrong diet it will die anyway
 
Even an eel that small can give out some sufficient waste but im not worrying. The hardest part for the friend is trying to get the little thing to eat. he sounds a little inexperienced to me so i believe that if he can't get him to eat the tank will be the least of his problems...
 
Yeah, there are a million variables. I use only water from my 300 to replace the water in my 10. The water from my 300 has an ORP of 350, and is seasoned, not freshly mixed. I only use deionized water in my 300 that has a calcium reactor, ASM skimmer, ozone generator, and 400 pounds of LR. Parameters are all good in the 300, and they perfectly match the 10's parameters.

I could see a newbie making major mistakes with their baby eel in a 10, but not in mine.
 
Yeah? How many Snowflakes have you had die because of improper diet, or are you just repeating everything that most people on this board say because they read it in another thread?

I have not had 1 fish die yet from improper diet, and most of my fish are healthy because I baby them and vary their diet. I will vary the eels diet as they get bigger but they they are crustacean eaters by nature, and they will get 1 krill each day until they can fit something larger into their mouths.

I could start a list of things that I have done against what others have preached on here that are totally false, but yet proven wrong by my experience.
 
oh i hear ya on the preaching part
its yer pet you can do what ever you want with it

krill is like candy to them, it leads to malnutrition
it however takes a very loooooooooong time for them to die on a krill based diet. long like 2 years
malnutrition is a slow killer not a quick one
fish should only be fed for obvious reasons, by nature a snowflake eel is not a fish eater, its designed to eat shelled animals. a fish here and there is fine, just like krill here and there is fine
krill spoils the heck out of them too, it can make them fussy to the point of refusing everything but krill
could it all be hear say? you are right, but you cant argue with the eels natural feeding habit
wetwebmedia.com has alot of info on the feeding of snowflakes
who runs wetweb? i have no clue, could be all a bunch of malarky

either way its your eel and i dont care what happends to it

and no i didnt get the info from this site, i got it from wetweb.
im familiar with krill from like hmm 1990...its bad for anything!
any fish fresh or salt and heck its even bad for my turtles.
its good only as a treat, but as a sole diet it has no nutritional value...its candy for petes sake
its just common sense dude
 
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I worry more about my eels finding a way to escape from my tanks, and flukes that seem to cycle every year or so than I do on the nutrition. My fish are all mature with the exception of the baby eels, and I try to make their diet as natural as possible. I let my Zebra eel hunt down his live shrimp whenever he gets hungry, and I try to even put ghost shrimp in the eels nursery tank so they can hunt them as well, but I try to keep from polluting the tank as much as possible with processed food that spoils if not eaten. The live shrimp also clean up any uneaten food and algae growth while the eels are waiting to get hungry.
 
yeah thats true, one can offer the best of care and then find a fish dead on the floor.
i mentioned the krill because in your first post you mentioned you feed it everyday and only that :p
when their so tiny then as long as their eating something then that is the main thing.
im getting a 7" baby snowflake this afternoon and im gonna feed him marshmellows!! :lol: :rollface:

im kidding of course...well on the marshmellow part, the eel is actually coming though
i closed off as many openings as possible, but there still is one part i cant fix yet

one thing i did hear...yeah more hear say :lol:
is that if you do find your eel on the floor, they can last several hours dried up. they form a mucus coating which makes them last i guess
when you find them this way rinse them off with RO water and then put them back in the tank
does it work..i have no clue lol...but it sounds about right
 
I only had 1, 6-inch eel get out on me, and I went to bed at around midnight, and found it on the floor at 4:30 A.M. dead. I put it back in the tank, but it was gone. I have heard from others that say that they have saved an eel several hours later, but I can only speak from my own experience.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10459007#post10459007 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sicklid
I only had 1, 6-inch eel get out on me, and I went to bed at around midnight, and found it on the floor at 4:30 A.M. dead. I put it back in the tank, but it was gone. I have heard from others that say that they have saved an eel several hours later, but I can only speak from my own experience.

ahh guess it dont work then
do they actively want to get out?? or is it just one of those things?

ive had three clownfish jump out on me the past 8 months. one of them i had for two years before he decided to carpet surf.
i got another, he jumped after a few weeks, so i got another lol and he jumped after a few days.
im done with clowns in that tank :lol:
 
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