Blue Ribbon Eel Project

[squidy]

Before everyone lets out a sigh of frustration, hear me out, lol. I visited my lfs Saturday to pick up a clam only to have the manager approach me and ask if I wanted a new project. I tend to take on the sick fish as I have several qt’s setup and an inability to say “no”. Anyways, he explained he had a Blue Ribbon Eel that hasn’t eaten in a week and said I could have it for $20. I went home and spent the rest of the night researching only to realize these guys have a low survival rate in captivity. I did, however, decide to go ahead and give it a shot as I was most likely the best chance the little guy had. I built a 4’ long pvc house with 2 sweeping elbows that stick up through the substrate. He immediately found his new house and has remained there every since. Oh I should mention he is between 3-4” long and he is in my 110g reef tank. I also requested half a dozen small goldfish for feeding. I read the BR eel tends to be more attracted to bright colored fish. I should also mention that when I was acclimating him in a 5g bucket, I tossed in a goldfish just to what would happen and he bit on the fish several times. He never ate, but at least he showed interest. My reason for starting this thread is in search for advice as well as to document my experience as there is so little known about these guys. Please feel free to add any comments, tips, your own experience. I will try to get some pics posted tonight.

 

[waucedah_joe]

Tagging along. I've always been facinated by these ever since I saw one at Drs. Foster & Smith Rhinelander Facility open house.

Side topic. Ever have to get parts for your skimmer? I broke an elbow on mine only to find that they are not a standard UPT fitting. It's been down ever since.

 

[seafansar]

There is a really good thread about keeping ribbon eels on RS, but I don't know if you can find it since the "search" is not working anymore. The guy found a good trick to get them eating. He took a plastic grabbers like this one:

and acted like he was going after the fish with it. The eel seems to think the grabber is another eel, since it's similarly shaped, and would get excited and grab a fish too. He's hold a frozen fish with the grabber and I think got it eating that way also. He did notice every so often the eel would stop eating and he finally figured out why. During each hunger strike, he'd notice he was missing another fish out of his tank. The eel just took it upon itself to grab some lunch and was just too full to eat.

Good luck! I wish you success! Take many pictures and let us know how it works out!

 

[squidy]

Sara, I think I came across the thread you are talking about. It was written by Bryan. Had the BR for 8 mths when he posted the thread... Thats where I got the idea for the pvc housing.

 

[antwan620]

I've had a black ribbon eel for a couple of months now and it has been doing great. Mine is about 3'. I've got an 1 1/2" inch PVC for it which it is always inside of it. I am not sure if you do already but you should have the tank covered because they like to jump! also I have tried to feed it with the feeder stick but it never took it. I tried to feed it silversides, krill, guppies, ghost shrimp and the only thing it went after was the guppies. I noticed that mine would never eat if its body is not covered. when it eats only its head is out and the rest of its body is inside. I have never seen my ribbon eating while its body is exposed. Also I noticed that it will only eat smaller guppies if the guppy is too big it will swim right by the eels face and he would not go after it for nothing. My ribbon also won't eat if my MH are on it only eats when just the actinics are on, so I always feed it at night when my MH go off. what I suggest for you to do is try a little bit of all types of food and see what it likes. Try live first then go to the frozen, try ghost shrimp, guppies and small goldfish. what I do is i just put the guppies in my tank and when they get near the eel he just grabs him and takes him into his PVC home. one last thing feed your fishes right before you feed your eel, when it sees all the fishes eating it gets him anxious. and before you start feeding it give it a couple of days to get used to the tank, mine did not eat until like a week of it being in my tank.
Hope that helps.
Also if you go on youtube and type in ribbon eel feeding time mine is the first one

 

[smoothie]

Good luck! We rescued one from an lfs and literally had to force feed it for a few months. It was barely moving when we got it.

 

[squidy]

Thanks everyone. This has been very helpful.

antwan620 - I will defiantly try feeding him without the MH's on. Thats a good tip. It also sounds like I should get a few guppies this weekend. I still need to setup a freshwater tank for the live food. Right now the goldfish are in a 5g bucket with a small filter.

 

[smoothie]

Are you going to acclimate them to sw? If they reproduce you will get some free fish food. Bonus! Guppies will eat anything so that is a positive when gut loading them up for feeding

 

[antwan620]

Hope it all goes good for you. let us know if you get it to eat !!!

 

[SantaMonica]

It probably was my eel thread; he will be 4 years in my tank this summer:

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums...6847-my-blue-ribbon-eel-eats-pics-videos.html

 

[nunlef]

Thanks everyone. This has been very helpful.

antwan620 - I will defiantly try feeding him without the MH's on. Thats a good tip. It also sounds like I should get a few guppies this weekend. I still need to setup a freshwater tank for the live food. Right now the goldfish are in a 5g bucket with a small filter.

would mollies work for feeding? they are brackish, and do really well in a SW environment, I had mine in there for about 8m and they reproduced well. That way you wouldn't need to have a separate fw tank just for feeder fish, also the fat content is a little better than the goldfish.

The only issue I ran in to with mine, was that the females were on the same breeding cycle, so I would have 150 babies every 60 days, but nothing in between. I just bought the $1 specials from the FW section, and acclimated them to sw over about a day.

Good luck, we are in the process of researching an eel tank now.

 

[squidy]

Hi everyone. Sorry I missed a few days of posting. After reading some comments from other BR Eel keepers, I decided to purchase some guppies Tuesday. FYI, if you purchase fish from PetsMart, do not tell them your plans to use them as food. Apparently they will not sell the fish if their intended use is for food. Anyways, I began a process of acclimating the guppies to mild brackish water with the intention to gradually increase the salinity over several weeks so the guppies could survive in the reef tank. I presented both a goldfish and a guppy to the eel only to have him reuse. I decided to give him a few days to settle in a bit more plus this would help create a feeding frenzy when I do feed them. When I got home Friday, I noticed a dead guppy and thought I would wave it around in front of the eel. Sure enough he ate it! And it was dead. I was so surprised that I grabbed another guppy and bam! He ate another! Its like everything clicked. He realized these fish being presented to him are food. Duh! He even eats the goldfish now. He even ate a frozen goldfish (thawed of course). So now I am headed to the LFS to purchase some Silversides. Oh and we noticed out yellow tailed damsel is missing, lol. I also saw the eel mouth the yellow tang but didn’t seem to do any damage. Surprisingly, the fish do not seem intimidated and swim right around him. Here Are some tank specs:
I currently have a yellow tang, juvenile orange shoulder tang, cleaner wrasse, mandarin, watchman goby w/ pistol shrimp, 2 green chromis, clown w/ anemone and yellow tailed damsel (RIP). All this in the 110g w/ 30g sump. Ok, that just about covers it. I will try to get pictures of him eating. We are also trying to come up with a name for the guy. Please feel free to add suggestions. At this point, it looks like another Blue Ribbon Eel beat the odds and has a promising shot at survival in captivity. I would also like reiterate that I did not purchase this eel but adopted him from my lfs. Although this looks like it will be a success story, I do not want to encourage the purchase of these guys in any way. They are way too sensitive to habitat changes and should be left in the reefs. Thanks for your help everyone. I will continue to update.

 

[squidy]

Well the BR eel ate 4 silversides! He even came out of his tunnel as I was lowering the tongs to grab the food. Btw, it took him a while to find his the opening to his tunnel. They must be almost completely blind.

 

[Eric]

My friend had a blue ribbon and it turned black after a few months, long story short I ended up with it. I never had a problem with that one or the one at the LFS I worked in at the time, they needed to be fed from tongs but other than that they were both healthy and active.

I was prepared for the worst upon arrival but both eels proved to be no trouble at all. I have to wonder if the reputation started years ago when they didn't have the equipment we have today. Just a thought, I have seen several people keep these eels in a variety of different setups with no problems.