Odonus Niger trigger vs Zebra moray, oh my.

[Mark Novack]

My Zebra is now a good 24" long. My Odonus Niger is medium sized, 4" about. While feeding my morays (snowflake too) the trigger tried pulling the shrimp from the Zebra. Now, the moray's mouth looks small but it took the shrimp and trigger, by its head, into its hide. The trigger escaped with tooth marks and abrasions 3/4s to its tail. 24 hours most of the marks have healed but the trigger is reluctant to eat shrimp floating around now.
I lost my Xanthurus tang last week with no signs of illness. It always harassed the zebra. Could it have been killed by the Zebra overnight on a territorial dispute? I removed it partially consumed by its tank mates.

Maybe it's time to trap and relocate the morays. Lots of work for not much to see and the Zebra takes enough sleeping space for 3 or 4 medium fish.

 

[lion king]

I've found some tangs can't handle the pounding of an eel, the smaller tangs especially. The niger will likely,but not guaranteed, be handle the pounding. The thing is many fish will learn to not mess with an eel with an attitude, and avoid his den, and not try and steal his food. A purple tang is belligerent and likely taunted and invaded the zebra's space, if that's what happened. A niger will likely wrestle with the eel, that's what they do, hopefully he knows when to retreat. the eel likely is not pursuing any of them. My niger used to taunt my jeweled and was always scraped up, he just couldn't help himself, even though he was always getting whipped.

I think that's the risk of choosing to keep eels, and rather than get rid of the eels, choose their tank mates more eel friendly in the future. A zebra eel is known to be a large eel, likely will geta full 5' even in captivity, so hopefully he is in a large enough tank.