why did my Snowflak eel choke to death?

[subzero]

I've had it for 5 years, since it was pencil size. Today when I took it out of the water, it was 16 inches long, 1 inch thick.


About a month ago I noticed that it was unable to swallow even the thinnest of squid tentacles. it's main diet over 5 years was squid tentacles, wild shrimp, and scallops (occasionally i would poke a hole in the tentacle and fill formula 1 fish food). I noticed that it was having trouble swallowing.. it took forever to get it down. Sometimes it would spit it back out.

1.5 weeks later (today) i fed it again; thin strips of shrimp and squid tentacles; same thing. It couldn't swallow it, and when it did, massive amounts of blood came out of its gills. Then 5 minutes later, it threw the squid back out. These were small thin pieces.

Now its dead. in the trash.

what happened?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I've had it for 5 years, since it was pencil size. Today when I took it out of the water, it was 16 inches long, 1 inch thick.


About a month ago I noticed that it was unable to swallow even the thinnest of squid tentacles. it's main diet over 5 years was squid tentacles, wild shrimp, and scallops (occasionally i would poke a hole in the tentacle and fill formula 1 fish food). I noticed that it was having trouble swallowing.. it took forever to get it down. Sometimes it would spit it back out.

1.5 weeks later (today) i fed it again; thin strips of shrimp and squid tentacles; same thing. It couldn't swallow it, and when it did, massive amounts of blood came out of its gills. Then 5 minutes later, it threw the squid back out. These were small thin pieces.

Now its dead. in the trash.

what happened?

Sorry to hear.

There isn't really any way to tell you for sure what happened. A couple of comments -

I would expect a five year old snowflake moray to be larger than 16", not sure why yours was stunted.

The trouble swallowing in a long term captive fish can be a result of goiter or a neoplasm. Did you see any swelling around the underside of the eel's head?

I'm not sure what the blood coming out of the gills means, but that is a major issue.

 

[subzero]

Yeah, I don’t know what it was, but I’m thinking it might’ve been neoplastic or goiter; and when it swallowed, it probably tore into it causing the bleeding