Eel habitat

[yakfishin]

What's the best way to make a cave for a good moray residence. I'm hoping to create a couple of place where the moray will hopefully choose to stay as opposed to choosing a spot in the back of the live rock where he won't be easily seen. I have read an article on using pvc pipe to create a sort of tunnell, with two seperate entrances- one on each end of the tank, and hidden within the live rock. But wouldn't a length of pvc like that eventually become a nutrient factory? Is it best just to stack the live rock in such a way that it creates a cave and yet remains stable, and just hope he'll choose a spot where he can be seen?
Thanks for any opinions.

[hooked82]

I would say go with the pvc tunnel. I wish I would have done that when I had my snowflake. I would get creative with it and use tee's and all that. As far as becoming a nitrate factory I would think it would be easier for cleanup. The caves in the rocks will hold just as much as the pvc tunnel will but the pvc would be less hard to clean out. Just stick a powerhead in the one end and blow the crud out(Just make sure the eel is out, he might not like that heh).

Just my opinion as I found the snowflake was a messy guy, and when I got rid of him, I found rotting food all over the place under the rockwork. My cleanup crew must have been on strike or something. Anyways, hope this helps.

[yakfishin]

I was wondering about blowing it out occasionally with a powerhead, glad to hear someone else thinks that would work as well. I like the idea of the pvc tunnell as well, mainly you then don't have to worry as much about rock placement to form a good cave and it shouldn't have any chance of collapsing on the eel. I'm planning on getting a yellowtail moray (Gymnothorax miliaris), hopefully one of the yellow canary variants. This eel reaches at most about 2ft in length. What size piping do you think I should go with?

[46bfinGA]

id get 3" pvc.i have 2" in my tank now with three eels,and im regretting it.my next tank will be 4" but a couple of my eels reach 4 foot

[yakfishin]

Thanks! 3" it will be.

[nosferatu51]

Similar, but concerning other aspects of an eel tank.
I was thinking it might be nice to turn my eel tank into a marine planted tank so to speak with lots of different macro algae types. I thought this would also help keep down the nitrates in addition to looking neat. I was wondering what an eel might think of such a situation though. Good or bad idea?

[46bfinGA]

i doubt the eel would care either way as long as he gets fed.i like those types of tanks i think its a great idea!

[Steph1643]

I have fembriated eel do you think I can put a zebra eel with him? I also have pvc pipe tunneling through the tank. I would go with three inch or larger.
Thanks Nick

[46bfinGA]

i would get the zebra bigger then the fimbriated if you are going to try it.i would be very cautious about adding anything with the fimbriated eel.

[hrdneglcry]

For starters I built a PVC house for my Eel. Then I put live rock over the house so he could come out, but still remain semi-hidden beneath the rock. I just made sure that he cannot pull the rocks down on top of him. The PVC does not allow this to happen.

[FMarini]

I like the PVC tunnel idea as well.
If you check out this article http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-12/fm/index.php
you'll see one at the end.