Do Snowflake Eels Eat Fish?

[M.Dandaneau]

In answer to the above question, I submit the attached photo as incontroversial proof that SOME do!

I apologize for the lack of clarity of the food fish, a 1 1/2" pinfish, but it's hard to hold the tongs, the shutter and STILL work the zoom.

Mike

[Oze Reefer]

My SFE will eat anything, fish, shrimp, crab, mussels, I have even trained it to eat pellets from the surface. My friends SFE on the other hand will only eat whole prawns, so go figure!

[M.Dandaneau]

While I've not seen the theory advanced anywhere except in my own head, experience and some comments on eel dentition by Scott W. Michael would seem to indicate this may be a sex-linked factor with the more pointed teeth of males (used to hang on to females during breeding) carrying over into everyday life and feeding habits.

It's not a great stretch to imagine males eat fish while females don't simply because they can.

Of course, it's equally possible that feeding habits differ according to conditions that vary accross the home range, depending upon availabilty of particular food items with local races, and even possible that there are TWO Snowflake morays in the trade and that the difference just hasn't been noticed by the right scientist yet.

Phd. dissertations have been made on much less.

Mike

[Bowtank]

I had 4 green chromies with my sfe, after 2 weeks there was 1 left, and i didn't use tongs, thats proof enough for me, at the time they where the only residents in a 75.

Mine was also more aggressive than i'd read about, after seeing it bite and coil itseld around my 5" tusk that was the last straw, a beautiful fish but unpredictable, maybe there are two strains of sfe, it can't be the first time thats happened.

[FMarini]

Mike:
while i have seen SFE eat small fish, its more uncommon in fish tanks. usually the eels will blindly follow a scent trail and if the fish is in the way of said scent trail, then wham, the SFE will grab him. I have also seen people feed their SFE fish meat or small fish, and hence once they figure out fish are food, then small fish are game. Out of the blunt-toothed eels (SFE, zebra, chainlink) SFEs are really the only ones I know who will eat fish. I could never get my zebras to eat any sort o fish, and they didn't even like fish meat
Ditto on the Ph.D. dissertaion, you should see what i got mine on (teehee)
frank

[M.Dandaneau]

I'm afraid to ask but dying of curiosity!

I fully concur on the Zebra eel conclusion, with a maybe on chainlinks and with the SFE thing being far more open than I ever realized, thus my speculations.....SOMETHING slightly out of the ordinary is going on here, and I USED to be one of the staunchest supporters of the crustacean/cephalopod train of thought, until fairly recently, but one's own eyes are hard to deny.

The "maybe" in relation to chainlinks is because I only became aware in past couple of years that they occur fairly commonly HERE, and I've actually seen adults caught on hook and line and bait by sportsman who didn't realize what they had caught (including me **blush**) with a panic reaction of "A SNAKE!" being very common ( NOT me) and the results highly predictable.
If the male/female different dentition for breeding theory difference holds any validity, then it's quite likely it would occur in Chainlinks as well, also of the genus Echidna.


Mike

[ChasingPuck]

Are the fish being offered as a food to something else in the tank? Case of 'monkey-see, monkey-do"? I've had several fish that see other fish eating something, so are willing to try it themselves, even if it's not a normal part of their diet. In some cases, they will add it to their diet, if it is similar to their normal foods.

[swegyptian]

My SFE, at 12", ate my 2.5" Royal Gramma, and also ate my 3.5" Lunare Wrasse. I was really surprised about the wrasse, but not so much the gramma. He couldn't actually digest the whole wrasse, so he spit it back up about 24 hours later. Not much left, but it did stink up my whole house on the trip in the net to the toilet. Ewwwwwwww.