Hi all, greetings from the Great Plains and the Land of Oz. I'm glad I found this place and I've been learning a lot.

I have expierence with reptiles, I keep Leos so I'm familiar with the needs of herps.

I recently acquired my first snake, a Common Garter who was a victim of a cat attack (not first attack by this demon spawn of a black cat of mine) and had doctored him up for the last couple of weeks and had been terrorized by the same cat until she lost interest about a week ago. And the poor guy has settled in finally and has taken to eating.

I did have two juvi Dekays as well that I was given, but the cat broke into the tank that they were kept and it ended horribly for the two of them.

And the garter, named Marley, is nice and settled in a 10 gal tank (was my quarentnee tank) with a couple of hides (a toliet paper and a rock hide) a couple of tiles on the other side for when I get the heating pad for the tank, but I have a low wattage bulb with him that only comes on for a couple hours and a water dish big enough for him to soak in, he's only about a foot long at the moment.

He's on aspen at the moment, which he likes to burrow in actually but under his rock hide is a paper towel and its where I feed him so that the aspen doesn't stick to the worms and reduces the risk of impaction (which I experienced once with a Leo who had a sand impaction from when I acquired her).

Any other tips would be helpful, particuarliy on diets as I have heard about feeding them fish/fish fillets but that pinkies are the best once they get big enough.