"Weaning" Fire eels?

Hi everyone, I got two beautiful fire eels from Cape Town a few weeks ago,tried giving them feeder fish but they were not interested! Luckily for me I stay in the low veld and we have plenty of natural food around,specifically earthworms! Boy-o-boy do they LOVE them,in normal circumstances this would not be a problem,but these 'eels' are HUNGRY! They consume about 15-20 earthworms each a day! There are a lot of EW.s around,but surely that's not all they will eat. Does any one have some advice on how to get them onto some dry foods?

 

Hello Rob
I have TWO of those beautiful Monsters , which I decided to keep .."JUST another few weeks" hehe
UNTIL I release them for sale (very grudgingly!!)

DO NOT be tempted to feed them so much, or "feel sorry" for them.
3-4 50mm Earthworms per fish every other day is perfectly OK!

There is no race to get them upto a metre!
...OR is there????
hehe

Mine seemed to be eating the high quality, safe, hygienic Bloodworm introduced into their tank for a few dithers (Loaches, and Cichlid tankmates)
About one cube of high quality frozen bloodworm, every 3days, per Fire Eel.

Inbetween I add a few healthy, feeder fish.

Other days they MUST be hoovering up sinking protein pellets...since I removed their tankmates a week ago..and NO food is left behind!

Back off live foods for a week , more if need be. Just add your tank usual menu, and observe.

i know these fish have HUGE appetites, but they also have BIIIIG RESERVES, you are not being cruel to withhold live feed .

These fish are farm bred, and were fed live, then prepared foods as well as live feed.

DON'T Give up!

 

Beautiful Monsters indeed!

Have been feeling sorry for them,every afternoon I get back from work they pop out of the logs and watch me as I move around the room. There is definitely no rush to get the up to a meter,can't believe they grow so quickly,they are definitely 40cm now,the one is slightly aggressive,but does not seem to cause any damage to the smaller(thinner) one.
Going to be hard,but will leave the live food for now.

Thank you for advice,they deserve a quality life!

 

Thanks Reedfish,straight forward indeed.

 

@ rob I've never had these guys but I did help a friend once who was having a similar problem with her fish. What worked for us was feeding live blood worms and slowly moving over to frozen blood worms . Seemed to work with them as they started accepting the frozen blood worms .

 

These "eels" are not stupid,think they agree with Reedfish's theory,they just smelt the blood worm and ignored them! Will try the live version when the summer gets on the way here. Thank you for every ones input and advice!