Hello, new/old to the world of herp in Texas

[SpookyWhispering]

Hi! I go by Spooky.

When I was young me and my sisters each got a snake, mine was a garter, black with yellow stripe and I was 8/9 years old so I don't remember many more details than that. My oldest sister's was a kingsnake for sure. I remember my sister's snakes ate pinkies and mine ate fish and worms with calcium powder. We bought them from a store in town called Reptile World or something like that.
My new male infernalis is arriving on Sept 4th and I am looking for a girlfriend for him even though it will be a long time before they are old enough.

So I've owned snakes before, but not since then, so I'm new to the world of buying snakes online. And back then the only info we had were a few books and what the guy at the store said. Now I can get knowledge from owners all over the world in minutes. So please excuse my dumb questions. Some of them I'm 90% sure of anyways I just want to ask to get a consensus from real owners.

Stuff like:
Aspen vs. De-dusted Coconut vs. Eco-Earth vs Fake rocky desert carpet (2 to switch out while cleaning the other) ?
Is my infernalis really going to burrow that much?
Who's the best supplier of frozen pinkies?
Since garters are relatively "social", If i raise a male and female together will they have any issue with mating? (pigs won't mate if raised together, learned this on my sister's farm)

And I'm sure I'll come up with many more dumb questions. Pm me if you don't mind being someone I pester with questions like this whenever they pop into my head.

Also has anyone though of setting up a Discord server for garter fans here? Live real-time chat and even voice chat.

[SpookyWhispering]

*Being the only post with 0 welcomes* ahh this is a familiar feeling.

[Zdravko092368]

Join the groups "thamnophis" and "garter snakes" on Facebook if you want more activity, forums are pretty slow these days unfortunately.

The substrate doesn't matter too much, they aren't picky, they will burrow, they will also climb, they'll swim, garters do everything, pretty interesting snakes. Just make sure the substrate has a dry area and doesn't stay moist for any prolonged period of time.

And no, keeping them together won't stop them from mating.

[guidofatherof5]

Well, let's see what we can do about that.


#1. If you're talking about aspen shavings, I would stay away from those. They can be ingested which can cause major problems.
#2. Garter hide a lot, that's what helps make them a successful species.
#3. I've always had good luck with Micedirect.com.
#4. If a rock was sending out the right signals(pheromones) a male garter would mate with it. Being raised together means nothing to garters. When it's time to breed they know what to do.