Shoot a firework rocket ~ Winners!Make a forum zoo! |
| Welcome to The Round Table. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Anguilliformes - American Eel | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Topic Started: Nov 17 2014, 02:46 PM (1,868 Views) | |||||||
| Furka | Nov 17 2014, 02:46 PM Post #1 | ||||||
![]() ![]()
|
American Eel ~ Anguilla rostrata![]() General Information Class: Actinopterygii Order: Anguilliformes Family: Anguillidae Genus: Anguilla Species: rostrata Location The distribution of the American eel encompasses all accessible freshwater (streams and lakes), estuaries and coastal marine waters across a latitudinal range of 5 to 62 N. Their natural range includes the eastern North Atlantic Ocean coastline from Venezuela to Greenland and including Iceland. Inland, this species extends into the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. They are found in a variety of habitats including streams, rivers, and muddy or silt-bottomed lakes during their freshwater stage, as well as oceanic waters, coastal bays and estuaries. Individuals during the continental stage occasionally migrate between fresh, salt and brackish water habitats and have varying degrees of residence time in each. Conservation Status ![]() Sizes
In Zoos Type of Exhibit: American Eels are easy to keep in the aquarium as long as they are kept in the aquarium. Eels are amazing escape artists and will try to eel their way out of the tank or up filter intake tubes, where they risk getting mangled by the filter's impeller blades. Eels are also fond of swimming up the outflow of "bio-wheel"-type filters and into the filter chamber. To prevent escape, the aquarium should be covered with a tight-fitting hood or canopy. If the cover includes a plastic strip that attaches at the rear, make sure that the strip is completely flush with the top of the aquarium and not turned up over tubes, air hoses, and other aquarium items that enter the tank. Cut openings in the plastic strip to fit snugly around tubes and hoses; should any openings remain, plug them with filter floss as if you were adding insulation to a drafty window or door. Fry guards are a must for filter intake tubes. Avoid the use of undergravel filters, since eels will swim down the lift tubes and get trapped under the filter plate. And if it doesn't interfere with tank aesthetics, an added precaution is to lower the water level a few inches from the top. Do not underestimate the eel's Houdiniesque talents. As long as they stay in the aquarium, captive eels are exceptionally hardy and long-lived. The eel's aquarium hardiness stems from its ability to exploit different habitats and types of food in the wild. As such, eels are not fussy about water conditions and will accept any aquarium fare. It's even possible to keep eels in unfiltered aquaria as long as they are not overcrowded and overfed, and partial water changes are performed occasionally. They need burrows, tubes, snags, masses of plants, other types of shelters to hide in. Temperament: By day, captive eels usually remain buried in the aquarium substrate, or under rocks or other ornaments. By night, they are restlessly active. Once adapted to aquarium life, eels will come out from their burrows as soon as food hits the water. Given enough food, small yellow eels will usually leave living tankmates of the same size or bigger alone. But as they grow -- and they will grow quickly -- so do their appetites. If their food intake is not increased, they will start picking on other fishes at night, especially other bottom-living fishes, such as darters. Diet: The yellow eel is essentially a nocturnal benthic omnivore. Prey includes fishes, molluscs, bivalves, crustaceans, insect larvae, surface-dwelling insects, worms, frogs and plants. Eels will also perform a valuable service in the community tank by feeding on dead tankmates. Should a fish carcass get wedged unseen behind a rock, piece of wood, or other decoration, an eel will gladly strip it to the bone before it can foul the water. Social Needs: Eels aren't social animals. They can share an exhibit if enough hiding places are provided. Be careful about mixing various eels together, as they are known to be cannibalistic. Reproduction: The American eel’s complex life history begins far offshore in the Sargasso Sea in a semelparous and panmictic reproduction. From there, young eels drift with ocean currents and then migrate inland into streams, rivers and lakes. This journey may take many years to complete with some eels travelling as far as 6,000 kilometers. After reaching these freshwater bodies they feed and mature for approximately 10 to 25 years before migrating back to the Sargasso Sea in order to complete their life cycle. Extra Information:
Exhibit Examples Extra Pictures
|
||||||
![]() |
|
||||||
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |||||||
| « Previous Topic · Osteichthyes · Next Topic » |

FAQ
Search
Members
Rules
Staff PM Box
Downloads
Pointies
Groups










