Loaches Online Forum

So i was looking at the LFS to see if i could find some more yoyo loaches today, when i stumbled across this guy. The person working at the LFS told me it was a Knife fish.. but it clearly looks like a zig zag eel / half banded eel. Can anyone confirm? been trying to ID it but a lot of them look so similar.

It is a Mastacembalus sp., not a knife fish (unless I don't know the English name conventions). I can't tell you the specific species though.

Ditto, it is a fresh water Eel, not a Knife.
Actually not a real Eel (a specific group of fish) but in the group that includes the species Mastacembalus. There are a couple of species.

Yeah i tried telling the sales person at the LFS that .. not a knife. But hey they claimed it was the lighting in the tank making it look different. I only paid $3.50 for this guy.. seen similar species at a few other LFS today going for 16.99 and up. They were tire track eels tho. I don't think this guy is. i think hes a half banded. Either way hes been great so far. Not too shy, comes out frequently and hangs out with the loaches. Loves small earth worms.. cant get him to eat anything else. Tried a few frozen foods. My only fear is his full grown size will he be a threat to my Yoyo's or Kubs. Half banded eels dont get too large.. tire track and a few others get quite big. Either way i have a home for him in another tank.

That is a beautiful fish. Absolutely lovely. I love eels. He's definitely not a tiretrack, because I have one. She is huge and lives with my catfish and bichir, because I don't trust that she won't eat my loaches. She is a good tank mate, although she hates the bichir. She shares her cave with a ropefish (they're inseperable) and a spotted raphael. When my clowns all reach 5" I will move them in with the eel. I believe that if they grow up together, there's less chance of predation, especially if they are well fed.

I have a yellow tailed spiney eel and peacocks with my bigger loaches -- clowns, yoyos, histi with no problems. They have lived together for years. I also have another yellow tail with a zebra eel (a wonderful, outgoing, friendly eel) living in a tank with BN fry and small B. striata and there's no problems. Lovely fish. I don't purposely have BN fry with eels, but the adults breed in the tank.

With my larger eels I feed cocktail shrimp that I break apart into pieces the eel, ropefish and bichir can swallow. My smaller eels all like bloodworms and black worms, but I haven't managed to get them to eat other types of food. I have lots of java moss in the tanks, and I drop the blood worms into the moss, so that the eels can pick it out with their tiny snouts, but the other fish have a more difficult time snatching the food from the moss. I also feed all the staple foods first like flake, pellets and wafers. This lets the eels know I am feeding, so they come out of hiding before I drop in the blood worms.

What a great find.