Barred spiny eel

Care at a glance

Overview

Keep this small spiny eel one to a tank, since it lives alone in the wild and will squabble with others of its kind unless the tank is large and broken up with hides. It spends the day buried in sand and comes out at dusk to work the bottom, so give it a fine, soft substrate it can dig into. Temperament is calm toward larger tankmates, but anything small enough to swallow is treated as food, so choose companions with care and avoid tiny fish and shrimp. Feed meaty foods such as frozen bloodworm, blackworm, tubifex, and chopped earthworm, and be ready to start new imports on live food. A tank of about 160 liters with a tight lid suits it, as these fish slip through small gaps.

In the wild

The barred spiny eel comes from the lowland Ganges and Brahmaputra, where it lives in ponds, ditches, and slow, weedy rivers, and it even ventures into slightly brackish water near the coast. Recreate that with a soft sand bed, some plant cover and bogwood, and gentle flow. Warm water from about 23 to 28 C and a near-neutral pH of roughly 6.5 to 7.8 keeps it comfortable, and a little marine salt does no harm given its tolerance for brackish edges.

Good to know

Macrognathus pancalus belongs to the Mastacembelidae, the spiny eels, named for the row of short spines set ahead of the soft dorsal fin. It is one of the smaller members of the family at about 19 centimeters, with a slender body and the mobile, probing snout the group uses to sift the substrate. Like most of its relatives it has no reliable record of breeding in home aquaria, so trade fish are wild caught.

Did you know

Most spiny eels are strictly freshwater, but the barred spiny eel is one of the few that tolerates the slightly salty water where rivers meet the sea, turning up in near-brackish ditches and estuary edges.

Common questions

Related species

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  Pavo spiny eel

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• 

  Half-banded spiny eel

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• 

  Tapir spiny eel

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• Burmese spiny eel

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• Line-spot spiny eel

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• Half-ocellated spiny eel

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