I've been keeping snowflakes for about 9 years. I'm on my second one which I've only had for a little more than a year. The first one died last year and was around 8 years old (it had a tumour growing just behind its head for a year prior). I've kept them in a 120gal reef since 2006 with only a few issues. My advice is pretty much the same as everyone else's: Build your aquascape out of only medium to large size rocks. Volleyball size or bigger works well for me. Fasten/cement all of your coral well. And forget about keeping any small slender fish, shrimp or crabs. You'll also need an adequate skimmer.
I personally love having them in a reef tank because I don't have to worry about them picking at or bothering any coral unlike butterflies, tangs, clowns, gobies, angels etc. My clownfish is actually much worse than the eel for pushing coral and sand around. Perhaps I'm just lucky but the one thing I haven't had an issue yet that is always brought up is the whole escape thing. Knock on wood but after 9 years in an open topped tank I've never had an eel jump out.
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