Well. What a surprise.

I know I posted previously about how I had an American Eel, and how I had it in with the larger sliders. I had thought they had eaten it, since it was gone. 6 months or so or 8 months ago perhaps.

The slider pond had a small pool canister filter. I just recently replaced it with a Pondmaster 1500 about a week ago. The pool filter has been sitting for the last week, still had water in it, but I hadn't had a chance to clean it out.

I had a 6" JD in quarantine, since it came in with a big gash in it's head. 15g tank, yes, kinda small, i know but with the gash I didn't want to put it into general quarantine, the cat jumped up by the tank and spooked it good enough to crack the tank. So I grabbed one of the plastic tubs, filled it with some of the pond water and got it moved in.

Then went to grab the old slider pool filter to rinse it out and set it up with a pump in with the JD.

I took the canister to the sink, took it apart to dump out the old skanky water. Pulled the foam and some other stuff, and dumped all the bio balls into the sink.

The next thing I heard was *flop flop flop* and there was the eel, scooting around under the bio balls I just dumped out. After the inital shock, I grabbed him and tossed him in with the big koi.

If he can behave himself I'll leave him with the koi. Dang.

nice, lol

Wow! Cool!

Thats amazing. I have had fry get sucked up before and live in my filters for a month or more.

Just amazing the conditions some fish survive.

Not only survive, but I think it grew another couple of inches in the meantime.

Nice...eels are very hard to kill.....lol

That is AWESOME!

Mike D wrote:

That is AWESOME!

I know......

saint_felony wrote:

Not only survive, but I think it grew another couple of inches in the meantime.

lol...from what I understand these guys often live in the muck at the bottom of a river or a lake so they are used to harsh locations in their natural environment too. Not to mention that the filter was sucking all that extra food into him at feedin time. Still pretty amazing though.

dirtydawg10 wrote:

saint_felony wrote:

Not only survive, but I think it grew another couple of inches in the meantime.

lol...from what I understand these guys often live in the muck at the bottom of a river or a lake so they are used to harsh locations in their natural environment too. Not to mention that the filter was sucking all that extra food into him at feedin time. Still pretty amazing though.

Yes that is true!