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Anguilliformes - American Eel
Topic Started: Nov 17 2014, 02:46 PM (1,868 Views)
Furka
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American Eel ~ Anguilla rostrata

Posted Image

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
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Sizes
Weight7,5 kg
Length (average)122 cm
Height (average)<--->


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:
  • American eels are economically important in various areas along the East Coast as bait for fishing for sport fishes such as the striped bass, or as a food fish in some areas. Their recruitment stage, the glass eel, are also caught and sold for use in aquaculture, although this is now restricted in most areas.
  • They tolerate waters with low oxygen concentration and, in extreme conditions, can survive exposure in the open air for quite long periods, as long as the environment is sufficiently humid. In fact they are capable of a peculiar cutaneous respiration, thanks to the vast vascularisation of the skin.
  • Considering the peculiarities of its reproductive biology and the technical difficulties that do not make artificial reproduction possible, all young individuals destined for aquaculture and repopulation are captured in nature. This contributes to a decline of the wild stock.
  • Eel blood contains a toxyn that destroys red blood cells if it comes in contact with blood. However this toxyn gets destroyed when the eel is cooked.


Exhibit Examples


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