Rubber Eel Amphibian With Internal Infection   12/24/06
Hi There, I came upon your webpage hoping to find an answer to my question.  I have a Caecilian (rubber eel) in a 10 gallon tank with a small Cory fish.  I've had it for about 4-5 months and it was doing fine.  Recently, I've been observing erratic behavior:  it floats motionless on the surface, just hanging, or it lets itself get sucked onto the filter.  Before, it would burrow or curl around a rock or the one small plant in the tank. Other behavior includes, what seems like, the amphibian contracting its entire body and gaping its mouth wide open and sinking to the bottom of the tank.  It then frantically gulps and repeats to contract and tighten its entire body and gape its mouth. It also has been gulping for a lot of air at the surface and has stopped eating (I've been feeding it live bloodworms).  I don't have a heater for the tank, and I know they should be kept at 74-78 F.  It was fine during the summer, but now it is considerably colder.  I hope you can help me with this, since information on these creatures is scarce.  Thanks,
Lidia
< Tropical amphibians need adequate heat to properly digest their food. The food is rotting in his gut and the bacteria are causing this gas/bloat problem. Heating up the tank to 82 F should get the digestive juices going and start to retard the bacteria in the stomach. In the future if you are going to keep him cool the stop feeding him when the weather starts to cool.-Chuck>

A Caecilian by any other name
Salutations Dr. Fenner!
<Just Bob please>
After visiting your website, I have found it to be extremely helpful and concluded that you're probably the only one that can help me! I stumbled upon it during my futile search for information on an unusual species (eel? snake? worm???) I bought on Saturday. I keep it together with a 12cm fire eel and 27 neon tetras. I bought it from a fish farm in Singapore and it was in a huge tank together with many ghost fishes and some fire eels.
Let me describe it in detail:
It looks like a worm/snake and is almost 30cm with a girth roughly the size of a man's middle finger.
The body is like an earthworm's in that it is VERY smooth. Its skin creases when it moves (it moves like a snake!) a and actually forms folds. It reminds me of the kind of skin a newborn hamster or rat has. It is a dark grayish blue and has stripes on the lower half of its body (which is of a lighter color) when viewed from the side. The morning after I bought it, I noticed that it had shed a layer of its skin. The skin was snagged onto the wood in my tank and was billowing in the current caused by my filter pump.
Then 2 days later it shed another layer but this time I did not remove the dead skin from the tank. When I looked closely at its body, I did not observe any breaks in its skin. It looked perfectly normal. It does not have any fins at all.
Another feature of this funny creature is that its head and tail look very similar! When it is not moving, I get confused sometimes trying to differentiate where its head is! I assume that this is supposed to confuse predators?
It looks as though it likes to burrow but my gravel is not fine enough and too heavy for it to hide under. It constantly tries to stick its nose into the gravel but is never successful. In relation to its body, its head seems pretty small and I doubt if a medium sized tetra would fit. I am mentioning this 'because I thought of feeding it small fish initially but that didn't work out. Its head is exactly like a snake's in respect to how the eyes and nose are placed. But the placement of the mouth is slightly different. Its mouth is below the head and looks pretty much like when you put your hand into a sock and pretend to make it 'talk' (I hope you understand my description).
It also does not like the light at all. When I turned on the tank light initially it immediately reacted by trying to find a place to hide. But 2 days later it seemed more tolerant. It gets on fine with my fire eel and is totally oblivious to the tetras. It looks as though it has VERY poor eyesight (practically blind) and I can't say much for its sense of smell either! This is based on my experience trying to feed it some live blood worms yesterday. When I dropped the worms into one corner of the tank, it initially did not seem to be aware of them at all. Then it suddenly got pretty excited (this was the first time I fed it. 2 days after purchase) and soon it gobbled one worm up pretty violently. It also hustled my fire eel for the same worm. The thing I noticed is this. It did not seem as though it located the worms by sight or smell at all but rather by ...... chance!
Its obvious that the fire eel and the tetras locate the worms by sight first before moving in for the kill. But it looks as though this creature is blind even though it has eyes. Firstly, the worms had to be on the gravel bed before it could eat them. After chomping on his very first worm, even though the worms were RIGHT in front of him, he still didn't seem to see them! And even if the worms touched his mouth or wriggled just beside his face, he was still excitedly pushing at the gravel with his nose looking as if he wanted to burrow???
<Likely so>
Then its as if he suddenly realized (or maybe randomly) there was a worm nearby and he suddenly opened his mouth and violently chomped on it. Its quite comical actually! It also looks like it would rather eat worms that are partially rooted in the gravel (it'll rip the worms out VERY violently) compared to those that are wriggling freely. He also seems to have a slightly more successful chance on grabbing a worm when the lights are dimmed (could be my imagination though).
I have thought of buying it some very fine sand but then some people have advised me not to. Someone said that since my fire eel is a freshwater species the introduction of sand would alter the PH of my water drastically. I am not sure if there exists fine marine sand or fine freshwater sand.
Someone else also said that the fire eel's skin would be scratched or irritated if it burrowed into the fine sand. I really don't know who to believe. Any comments on whether I should get fine sand?
<Mmm, I would do so... and probably move this animal (an amphibian) to a separate system>
But I am quite sure that this snakelike creature I bought would be most happy if it could burrow and hide in fine sand. Something like desert snakes that burrow underneath sand and lie in wait of insects and such? The documentary I saw about this particular desert snake mentioned that its skin was very sensitive to vibrations and detected insects crawling on the surface
in such a manner while it lay in wait underneath the sand. Could this creature be like that?
<Yes>
I am just speculating based on its physical appearance 'because I am really curious! But I can guarantee that it not a common loach, ropefish or Bichir.
I submit my humble observations to you Dr Fenner and look forward to your favourable reply.
Yours Faithfully,
Leonard Emmanuel Tan
<What you describe so well, behaviorally and structurally is almost w/o doubt a Caecilian (http://www.caecilian.org/) in the trade in the West most often called a "Rubber Eel". Please take a look through the Net re this group, its practical husbandry. Thank you for writing. Bob Fenner>

Rubber eel community tank 7/23/05
Hello.  I am soon to inherit a 55-gal freshwater live-plant tank that has been *very* well maintained.  The owner doesn't have time to maintain it and is giving it to me - replete with all the
accoutrements.  I plan to keep the tank a live-plant tank, but I also wanted to have fish and form a community tank with the main participant being rubber eels.
<Mmm, this amphibian is not that easy to keep...>
  Because rubber eels are bottom-dwellers, I wanted another semi-active fish for the midsection
of the tank, as well as a couple of good algae eaters (Siamese algae eaters?).
<Mmm, no... too "mean"... would look elsewhere>
Are rubber eels capable of living in a community environment?
<Most folks keep them by themselves, but they can be kept with very docile fishes>
If so, what sorts of fish would make a complimentary community?
<Please read through the freshwater subweb on WWM re>
If not, what advice can you provide regarding the support of rubber eels?
<Mmm, try putting the terms: The Rubber Eel, Typhlonectes natans in your search tools. Bob Fenner>
Any help/input you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Elisa "George" Berg