Recommend an eel-shaped oddball for my tank?
- Thread starter Cksnffr
- Start date
I have 2 rope fish in my 100 gal. tank, but had 3 in my old 75 gal. tank. I would say 55 is fine for 2 of them. Rope fish are very unique fish. They are almost blind, they find their food by smell more than sight. They are very passive fish, and will run from a guppy, lol. I started out feeding them ghost shrimp, and frozen bloodworms. Now they will eat shrimp pellets, and even fishfood that drifted down from the top, as well as bloodworms. They are mostly nocturnal, I sometimes only see them on cleaning day. I love mine, but I wish they were more visable. They hide for days at a time. They will eat a fish they can catch at night sleeping, but I have guppys for them, and my guppys are breeding faster than they are eaten. They definately are snake-like. My mom hates them because they look so much like a snake, esp. when they come to the surface to get a breath of air. Some say they are escape artists, but mine seem perfectly happy to stay where they are.
Dojo loaches...very active, do prefer company...so 2 or 3 would work great. Can be trained to eat out of your hand.
Eric
Eric
Hey guys! Thanks for all the info. I'm still looking at all these pseudo-eels and I have a related question: When figuring out my stocking levels (55-gallon tank), does a foot-long eel necessarily count as 12 fish-inches against my total? (I know it's not an exact science and you can't put a 55-inch fish in a 55-gallon tank.)
A tire-track eel at 2 feet would--according to the simplistic math--take up half of a 55-gallon tank's allotment. But what is their bio-load really? Do they poop like goldfish or really not put out a lot of waste?
A tire-track eel at 2 feet would--according to the simplistic math--take up half of a 55-gallon tank's allotment. But what is their bio-load really? Do they poop like goldfish or really not put out a lot of waste?
They're predators, so have a higher waste production than a small bodied omnivore, but not as bad as a similar mass of herbivore. Think 3 dimensions...24 inches of eel is a bigger volume than 24 ember tetras. Or even 24 cardinal tetras.
Aha. I wonder how much eel I can put into a tank (that will be) stocked like this:
Cory cats (5 x 2" = 10")
Red parrot (1 x 8" = 8")
Other catfish--synodonts, etc. (20" total)
Schooling fish (10" total)
According to the unreliable 1"/1g rule, there are 7 fish-inches left. But presumably the wee schooling fish don't count as much as the others.
Filtration is a FilStar XP3 and two large sponge filters.
Cory cats (5 x 2" = 10")
Red parrot (1 x 8" = 8")
Other catfish--synodonts, etc. (20" total)
Schooling fish (10" total)
According to the unreliable 1"/1g rule, there are 7 fish-inches left. But presumably the wee schooling fish don't count as much as the others.
Filtration is a FilStar XP3 and two large sponge filters.
Yeah...With that stocking load, I probably wouldn't add anything. One inch of parrot is a LOT more than one inch of cory.
Rather than 'schooling fish not counting as much' think of it as 'bigger fish counting for more'.
Rather than 'schooling fish not counting as much' think of it as 'bigger fish counting for more'.
