Zebra Moray....Good Story, Lesson Learned, Happy Ending!!

[Leslie]

I bought some frozen Seafood Medley at Trader Joes a few nights ago..... 16 oz for $4.99 you can't beat that price. I cracked open a lobster claw for 2 tiny puffers in Quarantine and dumped the leftovers into the tank for the Betta and Tuskfish. Well the eel went nuts. So I quickly put some on my handy dandy feeding stick. He is stronger than I ever thought.

The best part is that my make shift feeding stick was a piece of narrow rigid tubing with a toothpick jammed into one end. The real one was missing in action and this had been working well for 6 weeks. I was planning on getting a new one on my next lfs shopping spree. He grabbed the lobster on the toothpick tip like a Pit Pull and a tug toy. He pulled so hard the toothpick came off with the lobster meat.

Now mind you this is one fussy eel and I have put small pieces of shrimp sandwiched between 2 pieces of Krill which is his favorite and what he had been eating at the lfs for a year or more, only to have him spit out the shrimp and devour the frill. Well I watched horrified as he slowly swallowed it a little at a time. I thought for sure any second he would spit it out like the food he does not like.......NOPE not the darn tooth pick. I have stuck my entire fist down both my Doberman's throats on occasion to retrieve some gross dead thing they picked up on the beach and were trying to consume. I could not for the life of me muster up the courage to grab Stretch as my neighbor affectionately calls him and wrestle him for the toothpick.

Well he swallowed the entire thing. I had a really bad day at work and was quite raw and frazzled to begin with. So, I had a good cry over the "spilled milk" figuring for sure I would be responsible for his premature death and that I would have to watch him suffer as well. I spent the next 2 days off watching him like a hawk, sure he was acting weird and on his way to the big ocean in the sky...wishing there was a fishy vet to take him to.

I came home tonight and was looking for my big crab which I thought for sure the new Tusk finished off. Low and behold what did I find.......yup the toothpick.....right in front of his favorite pvc cave entrance.

I assume he regurgitated it. So all is well that ends well and another lesson learned.

Thought some of you might get a kick out of the story and that perhaps someone as silly as my self might be spared a similar experience.

[yoink326]

I'm glad everything is ok Leslie. I'm aquascaping my tank right now and I put in a piece of 3" pvc in hopes that my future eel will make it it's quarters. It was rather fun! I'm still torn between a Zebra and Gymnothorax permistus.

[M.Dandaneau]

LOL!

Eels are great, morays in particular, so expect more of the same in the future.

A friend brought me home a baseball sized octopus from a fishing trip that expired in the middle of the 1st night, having spent several hours in a bait bucket while at sea, been caught on a hook and dragged up from who knows what depth............to make a long story short, I dropped the whole deceased octopus in to see if the moray would be interested.

Interested was an understatement and he ate the whole thing (luckily it was a large Snowflake, about 36" long).

I've since found that the same reaction is normal with squid, more so with octopus in at least 7 species of eels.


Mike

[Leslie]

Yoink....I love aquascaping! It took my eel awhile to settle into one of the peices of PVC but now it is his favorite spot. That other eel is a beauty. That would be a tough decision. Now I want one of those too!

Mike....YIKES!! I have some octopus in the freezer, found it in the gourmet/health food grocery store. I can't wait to try it. It is on the menu for dinner tonight.

This eel is a crack up. I emailed Fmarini in my panic stricken state and he mentioned that they will eat the claw as well. I guess I spoil my fish......I declawed the darn thing before I tossed it in.

I threw in a peice of the claw last night for fun.....the fish are better than TV and that almost blind creature found it and played with it like a cat does a mouse. He is out right now looking for more.

If I give him something a tad to big he shakes back and forth like dog. ......

Now if I could just get my new Angler to eat non living food I would be thrilled.

Leslie

[M.Dandaneau]

Anglers are trickier, but still it can SOMETIMES be done.........I've yet to get one to eat anything that isn't a whole dead fish or at least the head of one, with the eyes apparently the deciding factor, not surprising since they trefer to eat their food head first, especially larger items, while little ones are engulfed without such attention.

Of course having fresh marine fish of all sizes to freeze helps tremedously, something that I almost feel guilty about. **grin**

As stated elsewhere, we currently have a Spoon-nosed snake eel (30"), an Ocellated moray, (27"), our 2nd Snowflake Moray (24"-this eats fish and crustaceans with equal gusto, while our first steadfastly held out for crustaceans/cephalopods only for over 7 years....being slimmer and smaller, I suspect it's a male), a Green Wolf/Carpet eel (18") and an as yet unidentified eel(? ) that's now at the 2 foot mark, grown from about 10" at capture.

The only Scorpaenids in with the eels are a 14" P. volitans and a 13" Stonefish (who accidently ate the first 6" of the Wolf eel last week.....after several seconds of violent thrashing, he released it without harm. He's also eaten the first 1/2 of a black tang twice now, both times releasing it with only toothmarks to show it had happened, I suspect in self defense)

We've also got two anglers, a 2" dwarf and a longlure about 4 1/2" that are now eating dead fish from tweezers as well as any live feeders offered.

Mike

[Leslie]

Thought you might get a kick out of seeing Stretch the second the Lobster hit the tank......they must have some incredible sense of smell

On the hunt ...


Got it.....note the toothpick he regurgitated to the left


and one more....

[yoink326]

AMAZING! Great name too!

[M.Dandaneau]

Excellent photos and narrative......well done.

Mike

[Leslie]

Thanks !!

[Jow13]

Stretch is a beauty. Great pics.

[yoink326]

Leslie, I find myself looking at your pictures everyday and keep wondering which eel I should get!

[Leslie]

Thanks Jow13 !!

Hey There Yoink,

I think that would be a tough choice from the photos I have seen of the other one you are considering. It is a beauty.

OK here are 2 more to help you with your decision....I realize this is unfairly slanted towards the Zebra but that's all I have to offer photos of , unless of course you want seahorse or puffer pics but I don't think those will help much with this decision.

Stretch peeking out just before dinner.....he sorta looks like a little old man


Stretch stretching looking, well actually, sniffing for dinner....



My neighbor was over the other night and she wanted to see him in all his glory....he happened to be hungry so I lured him out... all the way out of his PVC and "Stretched" straight across the front wall of the tank. He is a very cooperative eel . We marked the tank and measured.......I thought all along he was about 18"....well guess again....he is 28" long and measures 1.75" dorso ventrally. Yikes I was shocked. He can really fold him self up.

I am new to the world of eels....I can share that this creature is so amazingly cool that I wish he was out more. I just love how eels move it's very graceful and sort of sexy in a weird way. I sometimes sleep in the living on the couch, which is across from the tank so when I wake up in the middle of the night or early am I can see him out and about.

I don't know anything about the other eel you are considering but my advice would be to choose the one that has a better possibility of being out more ....if one does more so than the other that is

Also in my original thread about this eel many of the guys who replied mentioned this species is less likely to escape. I can tell you this guy has never even ventured anywhere near the surface The lfs had him over a year in a small area and told me they accidentally left the lid off on several occasions over night and he never escaped, obviously .

I had a snowflake once and it was constantly poking its head out of my very inadequate job of securing the lid with tape. I had no idea what I had gotten myself in for.......I figured tape was just fine and if not more was better. I like eels alot but I like them behind the glass IN the tank and ONLY IN the tank. The snowflake got out one night on my way up to bed, way after I turned into a pumpkin.....0100 I think. I heard a thump as it hit the wall behind the tank and fell to the floor, although at the time I did not know what the noise was. I screamed when I realized it was the eel. The dogs..... 2 big, bad, rough and tumble nasty Dobermans......Ha yeah right in my dreams or on TV headed for the hills, which is upstairs on my bed. Some guard dogs eh? One little blood curdling scream form me and they disappear. LOL It was quite the fiasco. The darn eel came very close to getting underneath the bottom shelf of the stand, which was almost flush with the rug, so I would have never been able to retrieve him. I frantically looked for a net.....there was NO way on earth I was going to touch him. I found one just as he was about to disappear under the stand.....I threw the net over him and he froze. I scooped him up....it still gives me chills thinking about it. I rinsed him off and dumped him back in the tank. He behaved for about a week and then started in again with his escape attempts, so back he went to the lfs.

One more thing....get some moon lights and set your main lights to go off sometime before you hit the hay, so you can spend some quality time with your eel .

HTH ,

Leslie

[M.Dandaneau]

very few eels are "out much", primarily because it's a long way from nose to tail, with a LOT of fish picking on exposed tails, the most common injury site.

Of all the eels, the Zebra has to be the most peaceful (except to crustaceans) and hardiest, as long as you keep in mind that you'll need to find a source of shrimp, crab, lobster or such for food........frozen mysis and ghost shrimp simply won't suffice for a fish almost 4 feet long in most cases.

The appearance is striking, even in adults, so they CAN be real show stoppers, and will often live with very small fish, such as gobies, clowns, firefish, etc., something that can rarely be said of an animal that grows to this size.

Mike

[yoink326]

You know Leslie, I think I'm pretty focused on getting a Zebra now. I have to admit, Stretch has a rather "cute" face and there's already so much knowledge known about zebras. Secondly, my girlfriend (who is also named Leslie) absolutely hates eels, for their menacing appearance, but she finds Stretch cute. Score one for the Zebras.

[Leslie]

WoooHooo Zebras!!

Well then....glad I could help.

I'm not sure I would go as far as to call Stretch cute ....but he is a show stopper when he is out.

Tell Leslie, BTW great name , not to many of us out there, she has nothing to worry about Stretch and his cousins are harmless......just keep him in the tank and she will be fine. She dosn't have to pet him or anything.

Leslie

[yoink326]

Hehe, I think she's just freaked out about their beady eyes.

[M.Dandaneau]

Personally, I wouldn't have any great worries about petting a Zebra moray AFTER its had a good meal.

My occelated moray, Hannibal, is another story and earned his name the night we caught him.....the bleeding stopped half-way through the sencond day (mine, not his) **grin**


Mike

[Leslie]

Yikes Mike.....I will pass on petting the eel before or after dinner ....but if you are so inclined the next time you are passing thru town I will be more than happy to feed him so you can pet him .