Hitchhiker Eel ID please

[iishanreef]

hey everyone, i discovered this eel im my reef tank. must have come with some LR i got a few years back. i would like help to ID so i can decide how to deal with it. it is about 6-8 inches long and i must have had it for 4-5 years in my tank (without even knowing it... although now i know where all my gobies and shrimp went lol). Thanks a bunch

[iishanreef]

also, im quite sure its some kind of moray because of the round gill holes and head shape.

[eli@fijireefrock.com]

I think its a golden dwarf eel. a full size image would help better identity.
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=11024&d=1364191115

[Delphinus]

No effing way. Dude, that is perhaps the coolest hitchhiker ever, it ranks up there with that dude in Toronto a couple years back who found a wee little octopus in his tank.

If it has remained that small over that long, then I would agree it is probably a golden dwarf moray, Gymnothorax meletremus. They don't get much bigger than 8".

Are the eyes blue or is there any blue in the eyes? It's hard to tell by the pictures but the clincher with golden dwarf moray is that there is blue in the eyes.

Other possibilities, if the eyes have no blue:

- white ribbon eel (not to be confused with blue ribbon eels, different species, and blue ribbons don't live long in captivity), I think they can have yellow/gold colour variations. http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=15+29+1737&pcatid=1737

- golden moray. I forget the species name but there is another golden moray but they get much larger than 6" to 8".

My vote is the golden dawrf moray. To be honest he looks a little young to me, are you sure there's no possibility he could have been introduced sooner than a few years ago? The colour of yours is identical to those that I've had myself but when they were young. As they get older the gold fades into yellow and eventually a sort of vanilla cream kind of colour. Although maybe that's just been my experience and it could be different for others.

Buy a lottery ticket. This fish would cost you no less than $150 at the stores if you wanted to buy one. I predict the price of them going up actually as it's getting harder and harder to collect out of Hawaii (where they usually are collected from).

My advice is keep him. They are the coolest eels and the most reef safe out of any of the morays (on account of their small size). They're no threat to anything but the smallest shrimp and fish. I have mine in with wrasses and and other smallish fish. I feed him krill every 2-3 days, I use tongs I just keep offering a shrimp at a time until he stops taking them. That can be anywhere from 1 to 6 individual pieces of krill, depending on how hungry he is.

They are escape artists though so make sure you have a good cover.

I'd totally offer to take him off your hands if you wanted to get rid of him but I don't see myself getting to Bowen Island too terribly soon. Bummer.

[lastlight]

to find something like that after YEARS of it existing in your tank is mind-blowing.

[kien]

WOW, that's cool a hitchhiker find! It has certainly renewed my hope in one day finding the Loch Ness Monster! Just because we don't see him doesn't mean he's not there, people!

[iishanreef]

Are the eyes blue or is there any blue in the eyes? It's hard to tell by the pictures but the clincher with golden dwarf moray is that there is blue in the eyes.

are you sure there's no possibility he could have been introduced sooner than a few years ago?

My advice is keep him. They're no threat to anything but the smallest shrimp and fish. I
They are escape artists though so make sure you have a good cover.


The eyes dont have any blue, they are black and goldish (but i will take a closer look and try go get some better pis next weekend, my tank is at my parents house). there is almost no chance i got him less than 4 years ago: my first tank was 50g and after it was cycled and LR cured i bought 2 15-20lbs LR that was fully cured (encrusting coral and sponges all over) so i suspect this was where i came from b/c the rock was very cavernous. a year or 2 later i upgraded to 120g and bought 100 lbs of LR but it was not cured and came out of the curing bins at my LFS, i finished curing it in the tank and i think it is unlikely that it could survive the process. after the big tank was ready i moved the contents of 50g in. since then ive only bought small pieces of coral. I am DEFINATLY keeping him, but hes in his own 50g tank now because small gobies are my fav and before i discovered him he ate all that i put in (cuz thats all he had to survive off of, no hard feelings). and his tank has a very secure plexiglas lid i cut myself with no openings he could possibly get out of (only tiny air holes arent plugged by heater/pump wires).

[iishanreef]

My vote is the golden dawrf moray.

im inclined to agree after browsing some online photos (despite lack of blue in eyes, but ill double check asap)

[iishanreef]

finding the Loch Ness Monster

yes thats exactly what i thought when i came home drunk one night and looked around in the tank with a flashlight, saw his tail scoot down a burrow and he scared the hell out of me lol. as soon as i can ill post some pics of the trap i used to catch him. so happy i didnt have to drain the "lake" to find this Loch Ness Monster lol

[Delphinus]

Maybe it's more like "if the eyes are blue then it's a golden dwarf moray but not all golden dwarf morays have blue eyes". I can't remember where I read about the blue eyes so can't verify.

I'm reasonably certain that's what you have there, blue eyes or not!

I love these guys to pieces. A couple years back I did a dive in Hawaii and when the dive master "so what are things people are hoping to see?" she was all taken aback when I said "GOLDEN DWARF MORAY!" Apparently people usually say things like "yellow tangs" or "turtles" or whatever but apparently nobody had ever asked to see a golden dwarf moray before that day.

(And we did find one, BTW. So kudos to them, they're not the easiest things to spot!)

[iishanreef]

they got a pair of golden dwarf morays at my LFS recently they are much more yellow than mine so initially i thought it wasnt but now i know they can be dark aswell. gonna go check them out and compare if they are still in-store. but all signs are leading to golden dwarf, thanks so much everyone. im going to post some more pics of eel aswell as the trap i used to catch it real soon... ill keep u all advised!

[Duker]

That is totally awesome hitchiker. When i was unpacking LR at progressive quite a few years ago now, me and Gareth actually found a dwarf golden eel in one of the LR pieces, it was dead unfortunatly. But it does happen...cool hitchikers!

[iishanreef]

i checked out the golden dwarf morays they had at my LFS ($160 each, or $400 for a pair) they were light yellow but aside from that i noticed two distict differences: they had blue eyes as mentioned before, and the also had a vertical black stripe across the eye. as you can see in my pic there is no black stripe. attached is a pic of the golden dwarf they had at myLFS

[Delphinus]

Beautiful - which LFS is that? (Not that I could afford them anyhow but my curiousity gets the better of me - I loooove these eels.. :lol:)

I still sorta think it is a golden dwarf. I wish I could find more info about the blue eyes, I know they are the only ones to have blue eyes but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't any without blue eyes.

It just seems to me that any other eel after 4-5 years would be bigger. And despite the lack of blue eyes he just looks exactly like how mine did at first (I've had mine probably around 3-4 years now).

One thing that has me unsure though is that usually (maybe this isn't 100% but usually) golden dwarves come out of Hawaii. If he was a hitchhiker on rock, that rock didn't come from Hawaii. So it would be interesting to see what their range is. Or maybe he was an escapee from a tank at a LFS and managed to get into a rock holding tank or something. Man, if this guy could talk, what a story he'd have.

One possible other guess though is the ghost eel or white ribbon eel (Pseudechidna brummeri) and I understand their range includes Indonesia and for sure a lot of rock come from there. So it could be that. (Although I'm liking the "escaped at LFS into rock tank" theory the more I think about it :lol: ). But when I look at pictures of them, even the yellow ones don't look quite that colour that yours is and they just have other features that look different. http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/9/fish1

There is a yellow moray eel too, that I think comes from South America that probably looks very similar to the golden dwarf when small but they get big like 70cm. http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=15+29+1423&pcatid=1423

[Delphinus]

If you happen to get a positive ID on a different forum please post back the findings here. I'm very interested to hear what others think as well.

If you ever want to sell him, please let me know, I'll make sure he gets a good home!!! :)

[iishanreef]

my LFS is JL aquatics in Burnaby BC. what my be a possibility is that the blue eyes with black stripe go along with the yellow colour, so maybe the darker golden morays do not have this. unfortunatly i forget where the rock, which i suspect he came with, was from; it was this beautiful 15-20 very porous rock in a small tank with nothing else that i got from a small FS in north vancouver. they do not usually carry anything too exotic(they are sort of a beginner type store) like eels, but apparently they have VERY good taste in LR.

[daniella3d]

wow, hard to beleive that this heel survived a trip on probably semi-dry liverock for hours and hours, without water...

[Delphinus]

J&L! Haha I was wondering. That's not exactly next door to Bowen Island though, no? Or is it not too bad to hop on a ferry and head into town? Man I check their N&N page every day. I wish they would put stuff like this on there from time to time!

I'm going to take a closer look at mine's eyes. I don't really remember him having much of a black stripe.

[iishanreef]

ya its a little less than 2 hours to get from the store to bowen where my tank is but right now im living in port moody,for school, which is not far from J&L. it takes the day if im goin from bowen to JL and back, but well worth it. on weekends now i go back to bowen to see my tank ...and parents. Someone on BCaquaria forum suggested it could be a Chestnut Moray but i dont think so because Chestnuts have a curved, hook-shaped jaw. do u have any pic of ur eel that u could post Delphinus?

[lastlight]

do u have any pic of ur eel that u could post Delphinus?

it's a really beautiful specimen. i had the pleasure of looking after it once.

[Delphinus]

I'll have to try to get some updated shots uploaded. I know I have some but I can't find them in my photobucket. In the meantime here are some photos from when I first got him. I see he had the black stripe at least back then. I guess I'm not that observant! :lol:

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/P1010012-1.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/P1010013-1.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/P1010001-2.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/PB230007.jpg

[iishanreef]

thanks! very impressive specimen

[iishanreef]

wow, hard to beleive that this heel survived a trip on probably semi-dry liverock for hours and hours, without water...

it is amazing isnt it, ive heard that eels are able to be out of water for short periods, in the wild they can crawl between tide-pools to hunt trapped fish

[iishanreef]

heres some pics i got last night
how do i post them so that they are showed along with text?

[Delphinus]

Whoa, he looks positively pink or purpleish. Now I'm not so sure what he is. It's freakin' gorgeous whatever he is.

Have you tried posting the pictures anywhere else? I'm almost tempted to suggest writing into the folks at webwebmedia.com and showing them the pictures to see what they suggest. If you do, please post back any reply you get.

Here are some of their pages with info on eels..
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_3/cav3i1/eels/Eels.htm
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/morays.htm

[Delphinus]

how do i post them so that they are showed along with text?

Sorry missed this part in my last post. Couple options here -
1) Use a photo hosting site like photobucket.com. photobucket gives you the link for sharing on forums, you just copy and paste and away you go.
2) There is a photoforum on Canreef. I keep forgetting it's there but Titus would love it if more people used that feature. Go up to photopost gallery up there on the top bar and you should be able to upload pictures. As for inserting them inline, if you can copy the address of the file (in the form "http://somethingsomethingsomething.jpg" for example), paste that into your post and enclose it in "img" tags so it looks something like [ img ] http://somethingsomethingsomething.jpg [/ img] and then it should work.

3) Last but not least if you do an attach like you've done, you've already found the paperclip to upload photos. To insert the photos inline, click the paperclip a second time and it will load the image into the spot where your cursor is.

It sounds worse than it is, do it a couple times and it gets easier...

[iishanreef]

Whoa, he looks positively pink or purpleish. Now I'm not so sure what he is. It's freakin' gorgeous whatever he is.

Have you tried posting the pictures anywhere else? I'm almost tempted to suggest writing into the folks at webwebmedia.com and showing them the pictures to see what they suggest. If you do, please post back any reply you get.

Ive noticed he has a slight green shimmer when the light catches him just right. i just sent an email to wet web media so ill let you know when i get a reply. thanks for that suggestion btw, WWM is probly the most amazing site ive ever seen!

[iishanreef]

Hallelujah! this is the response i got from wet web media:

Let's see. It's a moray eel and no other type of eel. There are eight
small and brown morays known to science to far. Visible on your pics we
have a slightly darker rim around the eye and white pores on the jaw. This
leaves three species. I think we can rule out G. panamensis, which should
be larger after five years and has a slightly different head as well a
dorsal fin origin more in direction to the head of the eel. There remain G.
atolli (improbable, known only from Hawaii and Midway) and G. australicola
(of which also the shape seems to be a perfect fit to your eel). I'd say
you got yourself a Gymnothorax australicola (you are very lucky), a rather
small moray eel, although I cannot completely outrule G. atolli. They can
only be told apart by measuring their preanal length and counting their
vertebrae. Nothing you'd like to do on a living specimen.

WWM Crew= super awesome crew

[reefgirl189]

WOW, that's cool a hitchhiker find! It has certainly renewed my hope in one day finding the Loch Ness Monster! Just because we don't see him doesn't mean he's not there, people!

Haha you made me snort my coffee

[mike31154]

Very nifty. If it positively id's as an australicola, a rare specimen indeed. Only documented since 1992!

[Delphinus]

Insanely cool!

[fishoholic]

So cool, the only hitch hiker I've ever had was a lawnmower blenny that came with some LR I bought from a guy shutting down.

[monza]

Amazing story.

(Tony love the Golden Moray!!)

[paddyob]

Very nifty. If it positively id's as an australicola, a rare specimen indeed. Only documented since 1992!

21 years ago is actually quite a long time ago as science goes. Discoveries of rare to "extinct" animals happens all the time.

[monza]

21 years ago is actually quite a long time ago as science goes. Discoveries of rare to "extinct" animals happens all the time.

especially on the streets of Edmonton...

[paddyob]

especially on the streets of Edmonton...

I don't get it... What's Edmonton have to do with this thread?

[monza]

a joke.