Fire eel with white areas on one side
- Thread starter Raggan
- Start date
yeah I have to agree it's the bristlenose even though it's less common for a bristlenose to suck slime coat it does happen
He looks a bit thin. Those marks are pretty bad. I would remove both plecos if I were you. Then, keep up with extra water changes until the eel heals up. Those white areas can get very easily infected.
Other than the white marks, your eel has great coloration. How big is it?
I have kept the pleco's in it looks like he's stabilized nothing has changed on his injury in the past couple days looks like the hole has started to heal. He is being super active he was out all day yesterday swimming around. He is 18 inches long roughly he has always been pretty thin, he's only about 2.5 years or so old. He has been eating a lot of blood worms though. I am still doing a 40-50% water change every 3 days, just did one yesterday. I also put his old PCV pipe back into the tank to try and relieve some stress
Generally, once a pleco starts latching onto some of the slower bottom feeders, like eels, they keep doing it. I still highly recommend removing the plecos. Or, you could just get rid of the fire eel since it's not recommended to keep them with plecos anyway, for just this reason.
personally if it was a choice between a bristlenose and a large fire eel I'd keep the eel
I took out his new cave, I noticed there's some sharp edges on it. I removed the cave and replaced it with a PVC pipe. Since then he has improved greatly, most of the white is gone now and his big gash spot has healed up quite a bit. I will post some pictures in a day or two, so you can see the improvements. He is super active and has been swimming around the tank happy since 6 PM. He even came right to the top of the tank, so he could get the whole chunk of blood worms. I put in for all of the other fish too, but nope he dragged it down to his new layer.
I hear what you guys are saying about the Pleco's, but they have been together since they were 2 inches in size. I have never had an issue until now. I honestly don't think they are a problem, seems that his cave had a lot of badly cut holes in it. The inside of it had sharp edges around the holes, must be due to poor quality. I thank you guys for you're advice, I didn't respond right away because I am super busy.
I'm glad it wasn't the bristlenose it is rare they go after slime coats but it has happened
