Zebra moray eel suffering shipping stress. Help/advice requested.

[Monadologist]

I recently acquired a zebra moray eel off the internet to add to my puffer/eel tank. Normally, I get all my reef fish locally. When he arrived the bag was visibly fouled and he wasn't moving much, though he was huffing and puffing in the water, so I rather sharply abbreviated the usual temperature acclimation cycle, and due to the risk of pH drift when I opened the bag, I quickly plopped and dropped him in his home for the next little while. It has now been a couple of hours and he hasn't made any move toward shelter. When he first landed he was clearly disoriented and couldn't keep his head upright and was laying on his side. Now he seems to have flopped over so he's at least upright, but he continues to huff and puff and not move. My worry is ammonia acidosis / damaged gills from fouling the water in transit. I've darkened the 2/3rds of the lights in the tank that are on the side where he's flopped, pointed the two powerheads to the waterline to try to add some additional surface agitation, and reached out to the shipper to let them know of the issue. Is there anything else I can/should do?

I did perhaps stupidly drop him into my more carefully controlled and monitored predator display tank than in my quarantine tank to try to maximize his chances, just because it has a lot better dissolved oxygen levels with the massively oversized skimmer and powerheads, so I'm hoping this doesn't just result in him up and dying in the display and me really putting that skimmer to the test. =/

I initially posted over on an hour or two ago, and they recommend I come over to seek advice.

Current tank situation is he's in a 200 gallon with a 74 gallon sump, reef octopus 300-int skimmer. Other inhabitats are a couple of smaller eels (a snowflake and a skeletor), a 8" mappa puffer, trigger, foxface rabbitfish, flamefin bristletooth tang, and a pink-faced wrasse, along with remnants of a rather soon-to-be-eaten cleanup crew that was there for the ugly phase. So far everyone else is avoiding the side of the tank where he flopped down, although the other two eels keep sticking their head out from under their favorite shared rock to watch him, I think you can see one in the short attached clips. There's plenty of hides, though they decided they wanted to shack up. Who am I to judge? The intention is to move the big predators over to a 450 gallon in a couple of years and repurpose this tank.

 

[littlefoxx]

I would give him a little to settle in. Eels are very resilient. I had a snowflake come to me with three slices on her from the shipping bag. She acted a lot like what youre describing. She made a full recovery. I would just observe for now and make sure you add an air stone into the big tank and let him recover.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I recently acquired a zebra moray eel off the internet to add to my puffer/eel tank. Normally, I get all my reef fish locally. When he arrived the bag was visibly fouled and he wasn't moving much, though he was huffing and puffing in the water, so I rather sharply abbreviated the usual temperature acclimation cycle, and due to the risk of pH drift when I opened the bag, I quickly plopped and dropped him in his home for the next little while. It has now been a couple of hours and he hasn't made any move toward shelter. When he first landed he was clearly disoriented and couldn't keep his head upright and was laying on his side. Now he seems to have flopped over so he's at least upright, but he continues to huff and puff and not move. My worry is ammonia acidosis / damaged gills from fouling the water in transit. I've darkened the 2/3rds of the lights in the tank that are on the side where he's flopped, pointed the two powerheads to the waterline to try to add some additional surface agitation, and reached out to the shipper to let them know of the issue. Is there anything else I can/should do?

I did perhaps stupidly drop him into my more carefully controlled and monitored predator display tank than in my quarantine tank to try to maximize his chances, just because it has a lot better dissolved oxygen levels with the massively oversized skimmer and powerheads, so I'm hoping this doesn't just result in him up and dying in the display and me really putting that skimmer to the test. =/

I initially posted over on an hour or two ago, and they recommend I come over to seek advice.

Current tank situation is he's in a 200 gallon with a 74 gallon sump, reef octopus 300-int skimmer. Other inhabitats are a couple of smaller eels (a snowflake and a skeletor), a 8" mappa puffer, trigger, foxface rabbitfish, flamefin bristletooth tang, and a pink-faced wrasse, along with remnants of a rather soon-to-be-eaten cleanup crew that was there for the ugly phase. So far everyone else is avoiding the side of the tank where he flopped down, although the other two eels keep sticking their head out from under their favorite shared rock to watch him, I think you can see one in the short attached clips. There's plenty of hides, though they decided they wanted to shack up. Who am I to judge? The intention is to move the big predators over to a 450 gallon in a couple of years and repurpose this tank.

Did you acclimate it and how long?
Lower lights and add air stone
Idoes the belly have brown spots?
I cannot compare to other eels as others will have their own situation

 

[Monadologist]

I did temperature match, before I introduced him to the tank, but I didn't drip acclimate.

Lights on the 2/3rds of the tank facing towards the eel's current resting spot are turned off.

My recollection is/was that for a fouled bag situation the bigger risk was the changing pH from exposing the bag water to air would increase ammonia toxicity rapidly and so I did a plop/drop through a net over a bucket to avoid bringing in fouled water and placed him directly in the display.

Light is low. There's a huge oversized skimmer injecting way more oxygen than any air stone and a voyager 10 and xstream 8000 wavemaker both pointed at the surface for extra gas exchange.

No brown spots on belly.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I did temperature match, before I introduced him to the tank, but I didn't drip acclimate.

Lights on the 2/3rds of the tank facing towards the eel's current resting spot are turned off.

My recollection is/was that for a fouled bag situation the bigger risk was the changing pH from exposing the bag water to air would increase ammonia toxicity rapidly and so I did a plop/drop through a net over a bucket to avoid bringing in fouled water and placed him directly in the display.

Light is low. There's a huge oversized skimmer injecting way more oxygen than any air stone and a voyager 10 and xstream 8000 wavemaker both pointed at the surface for extra gas exchange.

No brown spots on belly.

Still run air stone and assure nitrates not elevated
See if improvement in the next several hours

 

[Science/G]

Increase oxygen as mentioned above

 

[Monadologist]

Tank nitrate is reading as zero, the corals/algae are greedy. Dissolved oxygen is running darn near 100%. I er.. actually paid the ridiculous amount for the standalone dissolved oxygen probe for the Apex for the main reef display, so I can see it in the readout.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Tank nitrate is reading as zero, the corals/algae are greedy. Dissolved oxygen is running darn near 100%. I er.. actually paid the ridiculous amount for the standalone dissolved oxygen probe for the Apex for the main reef display, so I can see it in the readout.

Not dissolved oxygen but add in addition with airstone. As before, rapid salinity or temperature shifts can cause issues as well as simple stress

 

[Dom]

Not dissolved oxygen but add in addition with airstone. As before, rapid salinity or temperature shifts can cause issues as well as simple stress

Poor guy; do you think it will be ok?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Poor guy; do you think it will be ok?

If stress is lowered and water quality good, it should but acclimation was not complete and can have adverse effects on them

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I did temperature match, before I introduced him to the tank, but I didn't drip acclimate.

Lights on the 2/3rds of the tank facing towards the eel's current resting spot are turned off.

My recollection is/was that for a fouled bag situation the bigger risk was the changing pH from exposing the bag water to air would increase ammonia toxicity rapidly and so I did a plop/drop through a net over a bucket to avoid bringing in fouled water and placed him directly in the display.

Light is low. There's a huge oversized skimmer injecting way more oxygen than any air stone and a voyager 10 and xstream 8000 wavemaker both pointed at the surface for extra gas exchange.

No brown spots on belly.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I agree, just dumping it into the tank was the best thing to do - if you had tried a longer acclimation, the pH in the bag would have risen, making the ammonia more toxic, and possibly killing the eel right in the bag.

The only better option would have been to mix up some water at the same salinity and pH as the shipping water, moving the eel over to that and acclimating to the tank from that.

I would give it overnight with the lights out, and make sure the other fish don’t nip at it (I’m worried about the puffer). I use a tank divider for isolation.

P.s. - methylene blue won’t help with this.

 

[Science/G]

At this point I probably would have already taken eel and put him in front of a gentle flowing powerhead to circulate water easier over as gills just the way that a game fish is revived for release after being caught.

 

[Monadologist]

Update: He's doing much better after 12-14 hours in low light. He managed to struggle over into a 4" sewer pipe cave complex I'd built the tank decorations around for him (4" sewer pipe with two gradual 90 degree bends, one facing the front of the tank, one facing up on one side, so he has optionality for how he gets in/out and can't get trapped.) He then hauled his way through about 5' of pipe to the other side, where he hung out until he felt too exposed. Then he found the nook between the pipe and the rockwork and wedged himself in in stereotypical eel fashion. Now my rock can reach out to bite passing food, as expected. ;) The pipe was sized when I thought I was going to get one much closer to fully grown, he's got a lot of growing to do!

The puffer is pretty good about other inhabitants so far, and only wants to make an example of a trigger fish that keeps trying to steal his dinner. The tank is set up rather deliberately with zones for feeding the puffer, the zebra, and the other two smaller eels separately, while broadcast feeding most of the remainder and supplementing the herbivorous crowd with a bit of nori. The key is going to be feeding everyone independently with tongs, which will take some management, the puffer can get a bit food aggressive, but fortunately I have two hands and he's easily distracted by floating frozen jumbo shrimp or clams to crunch, which is how I've managed to get food down to the existing eels.

I'll feel better when/if he eats something in the next couple of days, but he no longer looks like death warmed over, so I'm hopeful!

 

[Monadologist]

The only better option would have been to mix up some water at the same salinity and pH as the shipping water, moving the eel over to that and acclimating to the tank from that.

I considered that, actually, but it would have required me to sample the water from the bag... by opening it, and letting the pH drift, kickstarting the very process I was afraid of.

 

[Monadologist]

At this point I probably would have already taken eel and put him in front of a gentle flowing powerhead to circulate water easier over as gills just the way that a game fish is revived for release after being caught.

I er.. don't have any gentle flowing powerheads at the moment, both of the ones in the tank are basically sandblasters.

He managed to recover well enough to go and sort of cuddle with the mappa puffer, who seems remarkably chill about it, and the eel is much more mobile now. I'm much less nervous about immediate chomp risk from the puffer for now, and in terms of basic mobility he seems to be doing well.

The puffer claimed an overhang that fronts one of of the 4" sewer pipe ends in the tank as a place to park his butt when he gets overstimulated. Admittedly, this is _directly_ contra to everything I want a puffer to do, in case of blowup I don't want him going _into_ the cave but he sort of backs into it like a garage as a place to park his backend when he is full. I probably should have expected it.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I er.. don't have any gentle flowing powerheads at the moment, both of the ones in the tank are basically sandblasters.

He managed to recover well enough to go and sort of cuddle with the mappa puffer, who seems remarkably chill about it, and the eel is much more mobile now. I'm much less nervous about immediate chomp risk from the puffer for now, and in terms of basic mobility he seems to be doing well.

The puffer claimed an overhang that fronts one of of the 4" sewer pipe ends in the tank as a place to park his butt when he gets overstimulated. Admittedly, this is _directly_ contra to everything I want a puffer to do, in case of blowup I don't want him going _into_ the cave but he sort of backs into it like a garage as a place to park his backend when he is full. I probably should have expected it.

Excellent and as mentioned, they stress easily and adding oxygen with low lights will change things overnite. Keep lights low and slowly ramp back to normal intensity each day

 

[Dom]

I was worried about this guy after I saw the video. I am glad he is doing better!

When convenient, I wouldn't mind seeing an update video.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I considered that, actually, but it would have required me to sample the water from the bag... by opening it, and letting the pH drift, kickstarting the very process I was afraid of.

For future reference, you can draw off some water through the side of the bag with a syringe, or even a quick untie and retie.

 

[Monadologist]

I was worried about this guy after I saw the video. I am glad he is doing better!

When convenient, I wouldn't mind seeing an update video.

Here's a couple of clips of him massively more settled in. He decided the 4" sewer pipes were way too roomy and exposed, and decided to wedge himself into the rockwork that is built up _around_ the pipes. He's been spending most of his time cuddled up with the arothron mappa puffer (Steve), so I guess they are getting on all right. The map puffer likes to back his back end into one of the pipes under a large rock awning when all the other fish get to be too much or he's eaten too much and he needs to take a nap. I wish I'd gotten a shot of it before the zebra (Eeliezer) moved out of the pipe proper, because watching the two of them snoring away side by side was hilarious.

You can see him above the pipe and to the right in the first clip. He's technically visible in the front cave in the second clip but you'd have to play with your contrast a bit I expect to find him as the blue light shows up strongly on an iphone.

The tank is still very much a work in progress, as it is just now getting its long term inhabitants into place. (I only had freshwater tanks until January.) In a couple of years everyone will be moving into a 450 and I'll repurpose this tank, as neither Steve nor Eeliezer will stay anything like their current size for long.

I'll try to get a shot with him in a more active state maybe once he starts to take food.

 

[Monadologist]

It has now been almost a week and I've not been able to get him to take food yet. He's still moving though, mostly when other tankmates or me with my hands up to my elbows in the tank prod him, but not much of his own will.