What do Ribbon Eels eat?

[JAG107]

I've had mine for 9 weeks now, and he's doing great. What I can't figure out, though, is what the heck he's eating. He's sharing a 55gal setup with a clown trigger, coral beauty, dwarf lionfish and a couple of damsels. I haven't seen him eat one thing since adding him to the tank. Fatman-- I remember reading in one of your posts that you kept ribbon eels in a store a while back. Do you have any ideas? All the LFS' around here give me different stories-- they eat ghost shrimp or krill, or someone else tells me they hunt pods like a dragonet at night.

[McCrary]

Dude, they do not hunt for pods. Small 3/4"-1" shrimp are their main diet in captivity, you can put the shrimp (one at a time) one the end of a thin rod and wave it gently in front of them to get them to eat. If that doesn't work I would suggest using ghost shrimp to initiate a feeding response and then switching over to the rod with the shrimp. Ghost shrimp are not as good as krill, but it is better than nothing. If you haven't been feeding him shrimp then he has been starving for 9 weeks.

[dustin_P74]

you can get a butt load of ghost shrimp for cheap on liveaquaria.com and its what people use to wean there fish to eating in captivity if i remember correctly

[JAG107]

Can they live for 9 weeks without eating? Maybe he's getting raw shrimp/ krill leftovers that the trigger isn't eating, and I'm just not seeing it? I put a dozen ghost shrimp in a couple times, but the trigger went after them lightning quick. In fact a lot of them jumped out of the tank when they saw the trigger coming.
I just looked on youtube, saw a few vids of people feeding their ribbon eels krill and such off a stick. I'll have to give that a try, hopefully I'll be able to fend off the trigger for a while, that thing eats everything in sight. Thanks you guys

[Alexander]

in the future i would really suggest studying the animals you decide you stock in your tank before you buy them so you know right away what to expect for thier diet. it will save deaths and stress

[daugherty]

you can get feeder tubes that the fish can not get into but the eel can

[fatman]

LFS 's have a ready source of live foods, so feeding them was not a problem. Plus we had a lot of Mollies adapted to marine water which supplied a pretty steady amount of young in the tank as foods. Ribbon eels sold quickly so we tried to just keep them well fed until sold. During those days we ere able to be picky about who we sold hard to keep ornamentals to, so we did not sell ribbon eels to people unless we determined they were the type who would put the effort into teaching them to eat dead food. We in the mean time sold them feeder fish at good discounts. We even fed adult live brine shrimp to them, not a long term food but a short term subsistence food at least. They will train to eat dead shell fish pretty easily. Especially if it is raw and fresh.