After recently learning that there are 800+ species of eel, I started thinking about how few I have actually seen in captivity. Sure, there are the frequent Morays, and some Garden Eels, but then what else? Like most fish species, there is a seemingly severe underrepresentation, but probably because the eels are either hard to keep, obtain, or are deep sea/pelagic. What eel species have you seen/are commonly kept in a certain region? For the sake simplicity, electric eels and other non true eels can be mentioned in this thread as well.
Wilhelma Zoo Stuttgart keeps the european river eel, spotted Garden eel, echidna nebulosa, Enchelycore pardalis, Zebra Moray, mediteranean Moray eel, Rhinomuraena quaesita and electric eel. Hope i could Help you your German Zoo World.
Sea Life London has European Eels, Zebra and Snowflake Morays and Spotted and Splendid Garden Eels. I think Georgia Aquarium also has Fire Eels, though I’ve never been.
I've seen plenty of morays, Wolf Eels, and Fire Eels in zoos, but where are all the American and European Eels? Given that these are endangered species you'd think they would be more common.
I mainly see Green Morays all over the place, some Zebra Morays, and the occasional Garden Eels. I also see Wolf Eels and Electric Eels around.
Unfortunately, eels are kind of like lampreys — many people find them to be creepy, off-putting, and gross. Zoos and aquaria know they’re not incredibly popular, so they often devote their limited resources elsewhere. A shame.
Another reason eels aren’t to common in aquariums is they tend not to be compatible with big community tanks, particularly morays, garden eels and predatory eels.
Within Europe, the Marbled Swamp eel, Fire eel, Lesser spiny eel, Zebra spiny eel, Zig Zag eel, European eel Zebra Moray, Yellowhead Moray, Yellow Spotted Moray, Yellow Edged moray, Yellow moray, White Ribbon eel, Undulated moray, Turkey moray, Tiger reef-eel, Tiger moray, Spotted moray, Snowflake moray, Ribbon moray, Reticulated moray, Purplemouth moray, Pink lipped moray eel, Peppered moray, Mediterranean moray, Leopard moray, Laced moray, Jewel moray, Hourglass moray, Honeycomb moray, Greyface moray, Green moray, Golden tail moray, giant moray, Geometric moray, Freshwater moray (g. polyurandon), Freshwater moray (g. tile), Dwarf moray, Dotted moray, Dark moray, Chain moray, Brown moray, Barred moray Tiger snake eel, Harlequin snake eel, Goldspotted eel, White spotted garden eel, Spotted garden eel, Orange barred garden eel, European conger, and Band tooth conger are kept. 34 moray species alone, 14 other eels, 48 total is actually not nearly as bad as I thought. While most are only kept at a handful of institutions, many species definitely seem sustainable. Eels may be more commonly kept, at least in Europe, than we are discussing. Does anyone have information about the population in the US? I'm pretty sure it will only be a small fraction of Europe's
My understanding is that freshwater eels are very difficult to breed in captivity, as this is the reason why "farm-raised" freshwater eel are largely stocked from the wild and thus not a sustainable fishery.
I believe there may have been some success in laboratories with hormone treatments to induce spawning, but so far all commercial eel raising operations rely on catching the larvae as they arrive at the shore after the long migration from their breeding grounds. As far as I know many species only breed once in their lifetimes and have a very slow life cycle taking many years to reach maturity, so creating a self sustaining captive population would be very difficult.
Zootierliste lists 100+ facilities with the European eel, with 30 being in Germany alone. So I don't think that they are having too much trouble with this species.
I’ve seen New Zealand longfin eel Anguilla dieffenbachii (New Zealand’s only endemic species of eel) at Auckland Zoo. Hamilton Zoo are also currently building an exhibit for this species: New Zealand Longfin Eel Pond (Under Construction) by Zoofan15 posted 26 Nov 2020 at 9:44 AM
Since you just say captivity, a pretty wide range is available. I've seen a handful of moray species displayed, as well as garden eels and American Eel. Electric Eel too. In the private trade I've seen quite a few Moray species, plus garden eels, and a handful of spiny eels. I don't think I would say that the public generally dislikes eels. I've seen at least one eel exhibit at every aquarium I've been to. There seems to be a fascination with morays at least as mean creatures that attack divers, and quite a number of species of eel are present in the aquarium trade.
As cool of an animal as it is, the electric eel is not an eel at all, but a knifefish. I think it’s disingenuous to group it with any of the others.
As I said in the opening, because I was sure that electric 'eels' were going to be mentioned anyways, I said that it was fine to be mentioned. I'm pretty sure nobody is making a knifefish thread anytime soon, as there seems to be a slight lack of interest in fish on zoochat.
Fair enough. What I probably meant to say was that what I often come across is mammals, then birds, then everything else, rather than a lack of interest per say.
