 rule anal, dorsal and pectoral fins have red edges.
In the wild fire eel body length may reach 1 m (3.3 ft), when dwelling in a tank it is 0,5 meters (20 in) long. The fish lifespan is 10 years and more.
Difficulties in keeping
The fish is rather undemanding, but the fact that this is a predator fish and a large one as well imposes restrictions on keeping it in a tank. You will need at least very spacious tank with tankmates that are large enough, so the fish won’t treat them as food.
Keeping in a tank
|Scientific Name||Mastacembelus erythrotaenia|
|Common Name||Fire eel|
|Tank size||77 gallons and more|
|Diet||Omnivorous bottom feeder|
|Size||up to 1 m (3.3 ft)|
To keep one adult species of the fish you will need a tank larger than 350 liters (77 gallons), with 5 cm (2 in) thick sandy bottom and large number of shelters made of snags, flower pots, bunches of coarse leaved and floating tank plants, that will make the bottom a bit shadowed.
Fire eel adores hiding.
It is likely that you’ll have to forget about tank plants with roots and replace them with floating ones, because fire eel when burying itself in a sandy bottom doesn’t care about about the place, so it is quite possible that the fish will dig some tank plant roots and damage them.
This fish is a nocturnal one. During the day it hides under snags and stones, buries itself in the tank bottom substrate and all you can see is its eyes and a snout.
You should make sure that there are no cracks in the tank, otherwise fire eel will easily ‘escape’ from the tank through the tiniest slit.
Since the fish demonstrates aggression towards its kind, you should keep it alone in a tank but it may have a company of some active and peaceful tank fishes.
Optimal tank water parameters are the following: temperature 24-28°С (75-82°F), рН 6.8-7.5, water hardness should be not more than 15°. Power aeration, filtration and regular water renew (up to quarter of the total tank volume) is a must when keeping such a fish. It also likes when there is some water flow in a tank.
As a rule the fish is timid and it ignores its tankmates, if it can’t eat them; they will eat small fishes though. Fire eel shows aggression towards its king and that’s why it’s not recommended to keep a fish couple in one tank. Moreover, there is no point in it, since it is very difficult to obtain the fish eggs.
Mastacembelus erythrotaenia can be hand feed by its owner, whom the fish starts to recognize rather quickly. The fish should be fed with any live food (for example, tubifex, bloodworm, small fishes), dry and frozen food as well. In the wild this fish is a predator and it preys on insects larvae, worms, snails and even small crabs.
Unlike the male fish the female one has paler coloring and she is larger than the male fish.
Fire eel is a very challenging species to breed in captivity, so it is quite a troublesome thing to do. You should use some special hormonal injections, but even after this it doesn’t guarantee that you achieve the anticipated results.
The fish becomes reproductive at the age of two years old. To breed this predator fish in captivity you will need a tank (of 400 liters and more capacity) with a ceramic tube in it or a net stretched over the tank bottom.
The following tank water parameters are optimal for the fish breeding: temperature 28-29°С, water hardness about 10°, рН from 7 to 7,2. To create powerful aeration and filtration in the tank you should put four sprayers in different tank corners.
The breeders should be fed with live food: bloodworm, tubifex, insects larvae.
The male fish haunts the female all over the tank and then catches her near the ceramic tube and squeezes up to 50 yellowish eggs (3 mm in diameter) from the female. In general through the whole spawning period the female fish lays from 700 to 1000 eggs.
When the spawning is over the fish is removed from the tank. One third of the tank water is renewed with the fresh one, lighting is decreased to its minimal value and the eggs are processed with methylene blue.
The egg stage lasts about 48-72 hours. Fire eel larvae exce