Tire Track Eel, happy one day, loosing him the next.. or so it seems.. HELP!

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Mob8oss

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Sep 24, 2007
22
0
31
Orange County
I have an 10-11" tire track eel, and has been the best fish I have bought to date. great personality and I hand feed him. Always greeting everyone who looks at my tank.

2 days ago he started being lethargic and only hardly moving. Now tonight he is on the floor, has been lightly picked on and seems to be breathing kinda fast. I do not know what to do. my Nitrates were a little high, so I use some PRIME and got it back down to a more manageble number.. ALL my other fish are fine in the tank and seem perfect. I have 1 pike, 3 blue cichlids, 3 yellow cichlids, 1 bala shark, 2 plecos.. in a 60 gallon tank. with a Penguin bio wheel 350. also an air wand and plenty of places to hide..

my poor tire track seems to have something wrong with the end of his nose for some reason? and he hardly is moving. can someone suggest anything? I have a smaller tank with more aggressive fish in it, so I do not want to put the tire track in there.. so I am leaving him where he is.. Nitrates are back down.. water temp is fine.. and just did a 20% water change.. help.. anyone? dont want to loose my boy!:(
 
You do not want to put healthy fish through medicine that is not needed, if there is a spare tank available, put the eel in it....Keep up with the water changes....Do another 20% change tomorrow and the day after...As for the bruised nose, it might be from other fish picking at him or a simple scratch from one of the decoratons....Keep us updated...
 
well I do not have a backup tank... just a 60 gallon and a 25 gallon.. but the 25 has JD's, convicts, and a big yellow.. so I wouldnt want to put the sick eel in there...

last night I divided my tank, and made sure the eel didnt get picked on anymore..so he has some rocks to hide under and is now behind glass in my tank.. but he is now breathing pretty fast.. does not look good. I am taking my water into the fish store today to see what they can do for me.

the eel seems to have something wrong with his mouth.. well aside from the nips taken out of his tail.. any ideas
 
Sorry your eel isn't doing well. I have 3 TT and 1 Fire. I had the same problem back in the begining. Thru lots of research on the net I came to the conclusion that the heavy breathing was due to not enough oxygen in the water. Eels seem to require more than a cichlid. To remedy this you need more surface agitation. I got a couple $10 powerhead pumps at Harbor freight and kept them just below the surface of the water. (a few large airstone will also work) By the next day all was well. Now the only time my eels breath hard is from excitment at feeding time. Good luck
 
well the thing is, I have had the TT for a month now.. and he has been happy the whole time.. this issue just came up like 2 days ago... he seems to have something wrong with his mouth all the sudden as well.. its swollen or something.. and the tip of his nose looks strange..

I feel that the heavy breathing is him being sick and possibly dieing. how is your Fire eel compared to the TT? wo has a better temperment?
 
Maybe he's choking on something and that's keeping water from getting to his gills idk, I've never had the room to keep eels, but something similar happened to my 6'' convict and it turned out he had gotten a little to excited with the zucchini I put in my 55 and he swallowed a rock, so you might want to check that out unless you use sand as a substrate.
 
It might have been the nitrates. I had a problem yesterday with them. I changed 50% of the water, and all the fish laying on the bottom of the tank instantly got better. Add a triple dose of prime again and see what happens.
 
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