Hitchhiker Eel ID please

[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]

Originally Posted by kien

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.. )

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 ). 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/p...23&pcatid=1423

[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!

[iishanreef]

thanks! very impressive specimen

[reefgirl189]

Originally Posted by 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!

Haha you made me snort my coffee