What a legend..!

Hey guys,


With the pending sale of my tank drawing closer, I took the day yesterday to drain and clean my tank, and as such had to move my tire track eel to my new smaller octagonal tank. Now, that tank is sealed shut except for a small slit at the back where the wires/pipers of the heater, filter etc goes through. I did a quick visual measurement and assured myself that he would never fit through...

I returned home from my girlfriend about 3 hours later, and upon my arrival found him lying on the kitchen floor, dry, cold and motionless. As I moved closer however, I noticed that his gills were moving slowly... So I chucked him back in the tank and... VOILA! He's swimming, eating and going on as usual!

He has finally been named... Houdini!

 

Cool, I think you will find with eels and loaches that they can survive for a certain time out of water. I am not sure exactly which species are capable of this, but basically they secrete a mucos like coating over the bodies to aid in out of water survival

 

thts crazy!

do you think he tried to get out coz the tank is perhaps a bit too small for him?

 

Could possibly be, but I dont know much about loaches and eels, oh the the above behaviour that I explained, you will find these guys doing in the wild when the water pools dry up and then they wait for the next rain, somthing like that

 

Well, he jumped out of my 4ft as well, and he is only 18cm long so I think he's just a little adventurer... But yes, the new tank is a tad too small... I'll have to get at least a 2ft to make it better, but for now he'll have to cope! At least the water is in prestine condition! Nice and warm!

As for the mucus secretion, that's awesome! I'll do some reading on that!

 

was he slimy when you picked him up off the floor?

 

I suppose he WAS slimy when he got out, but by the time I got to him he was sticky, like a dehyrdated coke spill... I suppose the mucus lost a lot of water and it's consistency toughened up a bit. But when I chucked him back into the tank, he DID show excessive mucus coming off so your theory seems solid!

 

cool, well at least he survived

 

Oh, I think the outside of the mucus dries to protect the fish. The inside closer to the scales should still be moist, hence the ability to survive. When my brother and I were young we had a chinese weather loach. He did the same thing, and survived. Then I looked it up at the library as there was no internet yet!