Fire Eel

FIRE EEL
Mastacembelus erythrotaenia
Size: Can reach 40inches in the wild but usually about 20inches in captivity
Temp: 75-81 F
pH: 7
Tank size: At 6inches it can be kept in a tank no smaller than 35g

General Info:
The Fire eel is a bottom living species that likes the soft Southeast Asian riverbeds. The substrate in your tank should be a fine gravel without any sharp edges, since sharp edges can hurt this burrowing fish. The Fire eel likes to bury itself in the sand and show nothing but its head. It does, however, spend more time out of the sand then you would think.

The Fire eel is quite peaceful, particularly when it comes to young ones. Keeping it will small fish is a bad idea since these will be considered prey. You can for house your Fire eel in a community aquarium with medium sized or large cichlids. Avoid keeping more than one Fire eel in the same aquarium, unless you plan to breed them. Two Fire eels will rarely get along well with each other. A Fire eel that has been added to the aquarium when it was very small will sometimes tolerate small fish in the aquarium, and refrain from eating them even when it grows much larger. If you add new small fish to the set up it can and most likely will happily devour the newcomers.

wow. great info.

I had an 8" fire eel, but he died.

Never knew how.. he was fine one minute, and then the next, he was stiff and laying on the bottom.

I will be getting another one soon though. All my other eels are doing great.

oh and they can be in community tank besides cichlids, ive put a zig zag eel anf theyr closely related and they never bothered my loaches, mollys, bettas, and swordtails. thats wat i hav in my tank but since i got my kuhli's im a bit apprehensive on getting a zigzag since their little compare to my monsterous dojo lol.

Very nice eel, i had a dragon eel and the wild bass i used to have ate it, i dont know how but yeah lol..

wow nice Rach!

Thanks for the addition to the library!

pillierox1 wrote:

oh and they can be in community tank besides cichlids, ive put a zig zag eel anf theyr closely related and they never bothered my loaches, mollys, bettas, and swordtails. thats wat i hav in my tank but since i got my kuhli's im a bit apprehensive on getting a zigzag since their little compare to my monsterous dojo lol.

Yes, you are correct, the cichlids were an example of what they can be kept with.

thanks for sharing!

Great info! I will surely get an eel when I upgrade to a bigger tank.

Great article! Thanks Rachael.

Yes great info!!

oh and beware they somehow jump out of a tank wen u dont see any holes on the top!!!

Yes they do, we no longer have ours because of that very thing.

They have great personalty and are very curios and love feeder shrimp and live black worms!
There's one at the lfs I work at and he is such a cutey. Hes always out watching me when I am working by his tank, I wish I had the space to take him home

i luv my eel he was the very same thing wat ur talking bout fern. ive been looking for a eel but its hard to find it at my local fish store since he gets them at random times so i hav to go there every tuesday to see wat he got lol. im his fish advent customer lol!!! wen i see a new fish and has no info on i ask this boy, he must be new since he didnt know anything, but eventually the guy that owns the place told me everything about any fish i ask him. he's very tru wat hes saying(i like to question the ppl i get my fish from).