[shev]

for the PM. 5 inches isnt a baby, you will rarely find them under 3-4 inches. this is because spiny eels arent bred in captivity, and are caught and taken from the wild. when you find them in the store they are either fine and dandy, or falling apart and dead. spiny eels may get along fine when young, but i've heard (never kept more than one in a tank) that they don't like eachother. they are nocturnal but will adapt to your feeding schedule, feed them during the day and they'll be out and about in the day. also when they get bigger, they become less "hidey". they like to burrow into the gravel, and have very small scales, more like a skin. so sand would be better, so large gravel pieces doesnt cut him up, and they need clean gravel since they burrow through it. PVC pipe is an excellent hidey hole for them.

what are you feeding it? live foods are best, like live tubifex, earthworms/redworms, mosquito larvae are a favorite, small fish like guppy fry, glass worms, ghost shrimp, white worms, and things similar to those.

do not try to feed them prepared foods like flakes or freeze dried foods. you won't be able to ween them onto it. frozen foods like the ones above will also work. i would start them on live and move them to frozen. tire track eels are similar to fire eels, except they don't get as large, yet eat larger things. when the fire eel gets bigger it can eat whole earthworms. until then you can buy a pack of night crawlers from a bait shop and freeze one, then rip them into pieces and feed them to the eel. kind of gross, but you can also cut live worms in two.

20 gallons is too small, their growth will get stunted.