Hi. I JUST found this forum - it was a link from Scott F's site.

A week ago I was doing searchs on the whole vitimin b deficiency deal and came accross some articals on gartersnake.info - unfortatly when I tryed to contact the site person/persons with a question the contact form would not work. I've tryed several days now.

Background - I got garters because I didn't want to feed mice to a snake (otherwise I'd have just bought kings or corns) . I've ALWAYS fed goldfish and have several nice size adults. A few years ago however, I heard about this vit b problem (and I can't spell the "T" words... ) and started adding smelts (frozen) with a reptile vitimin supliment. (The fish are whole ... split down the middle)

Most of my snakes like to eat the smelts first- so no problems there... BUT I can't feed them to babies. I generaly TRY earthworms... but now I'm wondering if I've been suckered into feeding the wrong worms.

Anyway I copied the message I tryed to give to gartersnake.info into a word document and I will copy paste it here. Note- I am really anal about some things and I won't just go to walmart to pick up what they are calling "nightcrawlers" I want to order a bunch on-line and use them in a worm bin... which is what I've been doing with the european "nightcrawlers" - but now I'm wondering if they are really what they seem. If I'm going to buy "nightcrawlers" from anywhere I'd want to know the latin name.

Anyway see below: (some info may be repeated)
I have fed "nightcrawlers" to my baby snakes in the past and now I'm concerned that I may not really be feeding them nightcrawlers. (On a side note I bought garter snakes so I wouldn't have to feed them mice. I used to have gerbils as pets and just don't like the idea of feeding mammal to a snake. and now am appalled to find out that the all or mostly fish diet I use may actually be harming them. I DO use supplements now - but it's hard to supplement a baby that will only eat moving things in a food bowl - and it's easier to put supplements on worms)

ANYWAY. right now so called European nightcrawlers are advertised everywhere as bait worms, composting worms, worms you can feed to reptiles etc. but... now I have discovered that they have the same genies (spelling?) name as red worms.

I was reading your article: Feeding Earthworms: Red Wigglers vs. Nightcrawlers - gartersnake.info

and grew concerned when I discovered that red wigglers are Eisenia Foetida and European "nightcrawlers" are Eisenia Hortensis"

but I can't tell if any place sells the "Lumbricus terrestris" - and if I can use them in the worm bin I have (to raise)

So the question is... are European nightcrawlers ok to feed to garter snakes or are they really red worms in disguise?

Thanks for any help.
- Sharon
Also if you know another way to contact the people at gartersnake.info - please let me know.