I love garden eels and want to get them for my 50 gallon, I don’t have the tank set up yet and I know I need a thick bottom and feed once a day and I can do that, I plan on putting a pair of clowns, a cleaner shrimp and maybe a Pom Pom crab or two, are these Good together? Will I have any problems? Are garden eels hard I keep?
Garden eels
- Thread starter Carmal
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Brew12
Electrical Gru
Garden eels are very hard to keep. I recommend reading this.
https://www.advancedaquarist.com/2011/7/fish2
They are hard to keep, not very hard. I had them for several years and if I did not move I'd still have them. (it was so much fun removing 100s of lbs of sand and catching all the eels to give them away). If you have any questions feel free to ask. Since you don't have the tank setup you are already ahead of the game. A garden eel tank needs to be a garden eel tank first a reef second. Adding one or 2 to an existing reef is asking for trouble. They are pretty social too so I'd consider getting at least 4 and expect 3 to survive long term, maybe all 4. You want spotted garden eels (black and white) not splendid garden eels (the orange ones). While you can keep splendid they do not fare as well as the spotted. Can't recall the scientific names off hand.
Start with the eels then try and add other things later. You already know you need a deep sand bed, 8" is good. You could go a little deeper but that should be sufficient. You will not have room for a ton of live rock in the tank but having so much sand once it becomes live you will have lots of biological filtration. Initially garden eels are VERY skittish. They are afraid of everything including their own shadow. When you first start feeding them they will be spooked by their food. Live brine may be needed initially but start mixing frozen and move to mysis as soon as possible. You likely have to drop the food in from the side, or step far away after dropping it in as they will be afraid of you in front of the tank. I never tried feeding them anything but frozen food and live brine. They may go for pellets but mysis is a nutritious enough food to make up the bulk of their diet. LRS is another good option.
Flow is very important in a garden eel tank, the flow needs to carry their food to them. If they can't reach the food from their hole they will not eat. They do move from time to time but once they are in their holes you may need to adjust powerhead placement to ensure food is going to pass them. You also don't want them moving too much as this is the only time you really have to worry about them jumping, or the first 30minutes in the tank.
Lighting, corals, inverts don't matter to them. If you have for instance your pom pom crabs or cleaner shrimp they will startle the eels when they pass them but other then that they will not effect them. Initially I kept just the eels but once they are comfortable you can start adding other fish. Nothing too aggressive, I kept a file fish, copperband butterfly, and later even lyretail damsels with them without issue. This was only after I had them for years and they were comfortable. Adding just a clownfish or 2 after a few months shouldn't be an issue.
edit : here are some pics, you can see I also had a bunch of firefish in with them. I had all the flow going one way and the sand started at about 10" and slopped down. All the rock was contained to one side. I actually added more sand at one point too. I miss these guys...
Start with the eels then try and add other things later. You already know you need a deep sand bed, 8" is good. You could go a little deeper but that should be sufficient. You will not have room for a ton of live rock in the tank but having so much sand once it becomes live you will have lots of biological filtration. Initially garden eels are VERY skittish. They are afraid of everything including their own shadow. When you first start feeding them they will be spooked by their food. Live brine may be needed initially but start mixing frozen and move to mysis as soon as possible. You likely have to drop the food in from the side, or step far away after dropping it in as they will be afraid of you in front of the tank. I never tried feeding them anything but frozen food and live brine. They may go for pellets but mysis is a nutritious enough food to make up the bulk of their diet. LRS is another good option.
Flow is very important in a garden eel tank, the flow needs to carry their food to them. If they can't reach the food from their hole they will not eat. They do move from time to time but once they are in their holes you may need to adjust powerhead placement to ensure food is going to pass them. You also don't want them moving too much as this is the only time you really have to worry about them jumping, or the first 30minutes in the tank.
Lighting, corals, inverts don't matter to them. If you have for instance your pom pom crabs or cleaner shrimp they will startle the eels when they pass them but other then that they will not effect them. Initially I kept just the eels but once they are comfortable you can start adding other fish. Nothing too aggressive, I kept a file fish, copperband butterfly, and later even lyretail damsels with them without issue. This was only after I had them for years and they were comfortable. Adding just a clownfish or 2 after a few months shouldn't be an issue.
edit : here are some pics, you can see I also had a bunch of firefish in with them. I had all the flow going one way and the sand started at about 10" and slopped down. All the rock was contained to one side. I actually added more sand at one point too. I miss these guys...
Last edited:
Js.Aqua.Project
Reef Addict
I kept a group of 8 garden eels in my 125 for two years, I re-homed them when I had to break it down/condense it into a 60 cube as I didn't think they would be successful in that set up due to space concern (these guys can get surprisingly long for only showing a little part of their body).
I had the best success keeping them with the following:
I had the best success keeping them with the following:
- Deep Sand Bed (4" min, seemed happiest in the deeper parts closer to 6") - I did this in just part of my tank
- Moderate Flow, they did not like being in areas of the tank that were blasted and food was not easily brought by them in low flow areas, I made the deep sand part of the tank right under a gyre where food was constantly going by, from observation - they did not like being "target" fed or having food hit the sand near them, but preferred to pick food/particles out the water that was passing by
- ROE - they ate ROE like no other, I personally prefer and use @Reef Nutrition ROE and fed it twice daily
- Mysis - they preferred shmedium mysis, CA mysis by Cobalt was a little to big, PE mysis seemed to be the prefereed size range, would also readily/easily pick up and consume Hikari's smaller mysis
- Pellet - It took me a while, but I got mine to readily accept @Reef Nutrition TDO - Small (The medium is just a hair too big so I tried recommending to Chad to make a "shmedium" but don't think that is going to happen), it had to "tumble" by them - again, they didn't like picking food off the sand, they definitely seem to have a "hunt/prey" instinct and want to snatch things going by them
- Here is a video showing how they prefer to feed: http://reefnutrition.com/roe.php
Bob Loblaw
Well-Known Member
Same boat here. Catching them was dang near impossible until every last grain of sand was out of the tank. Fed them Cyclopeeze and Ova multiple times a day. Tank had four MP-10s to keep food suspended.
Similar threads
