HELP this is urgent...can minnows kill my new garter

[Mommy2many]

Another quick, cheap way to make holes would be a nail & a hammer. You should be able to punch holes into the lid with the nail, just large enough to ventilate but not large enough for your snake to escape.

Welcome to the forum! The nightcrawlers can be found at Walmart, most of the snakes will eat those. You may have to cut them up if your snake is a baby. The fish from the supermarket is also a good idea, salmon, tilapia or trout. All of mine will eat salmon. I have never tried the silversides, so I'll have to try that next time. Silversides can be found at Petco. Mine also love the occasional live fish, so if you can find guppies, they work best.

Good luck with your new friend. What have you named her?

[Dameco13]

yea see thats one of my problems we dont know if its a she/he i think its a she but i could be wrong i compared it to some sexing pics and think its a girl

[ConcinusMan]

I found that it's tough to sex by one pic alone, especially a blurry one. The whole point was to compare the thickness of the snake just prior to, and just after the cloaca. Hard to do when it's blurry. Generally speaking, if the snake gets significantly thinner immediately after the cloaca, a good guess would be female. If the tail doesn't get significantly thinner, or is slightly bulged immediately after the cloaca, a good guess would be male. Also...

When comparing a known male to a known female of the same garter species, the male generally has more distance between the cloaca and the tail tip since the tail thins gradually.(leaving room for the hemipenes stored just below the cloaca) The female has less distance between the cloaca and tail tip (no need to make room for hemipenes) and the tail gets thin abruptly after the cloaca. This applies to most sirtalis sub-species and other Thamnophis species as well.

When you only have a single snake with nothing to compare it to, sometimes can be a tough call. For breeding purposes I have never had to resort to probing any Thamnophis species. The guess based on the differences has always worked for me.

[Conners]

Hi there,

I am hoping someone will be able to answer this question - I have tagged it onto this thread as it's relevant to the question the OP asked.

Does anyone know if Giant Danio (Devario aequipinnatus) contain Thiaminase?

My 18 month old tetrataenia pair cheerfully ate pinks and then mice for over a year, but started refusing them a couple of months back. As they have begun losing condition I am now feeding them on live fish as above to get them back up to a healthy weight. Over time I'll try and get them back onto mice, but right now it's just important they eat something. I am using Danios as they are cheap and the juveniles I get from the local supplier are an appropriate size.

I remember being wary of thiaminase when its effect upon garters was little understood in the 1980s, but it was always thought amongst the reptile keeping fraternity that I was a part of that it developed when fish were frozen, and therefore wouldn't affect live fish. Looking over the info I can find, I fear that may not be true?

Would be grateful for any input.

Yours

Conners

[ConcinusMan]

@conners

I know what you mean about things changing over time. I got started before anyone realized that certain lizards need UVA/UVB so that was a new concept. While I had my first T.S. concinnus pair, I read about thiaminase in the late 80's but they said it was only certain fish, mostly saltwater fish. Goldfish were supposed to be safe and so my concinnus pair ate goldfish throughout their lives (they lived to be 18 and 21 years old).

I must stress however, that goldfish were a "fallback" food, given when nothing else was available. My snakes also got plenty of whole wild caught trout fingerlings, whole tree frogs, dusted night crawlers, amphibian larvae, etc. I probably just got lucky in that the snakes got enough thiamine that it balanced out with the thiaminase laden fish so that it didn't cause any obvious disease. The thiaminase problem is a progressive disease that develops over time. An occasional feeding of "bad" fish isn't going to kill your garter. It's the proportions of thiamanase leden fish to good foods rich in thiamine that's important, especially when they are growing fast and their nervous system is still developing. Think of it this way: bacon and eggs tastes great and will probably do no harm to human. But if he/she eats it twice a day for years on end, it can cause health issues. Sparingly over a lifetime of otherwise healthy eating, bacon and eggs shouldn't cause disease.

Certain species of garters I believe would never take rodent food over fish and worms in the wild. I'm not sure if tetrataenia is one of those that this applies to, but it certainly applies to WC T.S. concinnus. Rodents might very well be more nutritionally complete, but for certain species of garters, it's not their first choice and it's not their natural food.

Might be a good idea to trick your snakes into eating pinky parts, sneaking them in with the fish after the snakes go into a frenzy feeding response and will bite anything. But definitely use a "safe" fish.

Some snakes just get picky at certain points in their lives and when you finally find something they'll eat, they get "spoiled" and won't go back without a little trickery on your part. It's just part of the training process. The snakes are training you, I mean.

[Dameco13]

omg i thought this was my thread lol jk

[Conners]

Hi Concinnus man,

Thank you for that very useful info.

I'm certainly hoping to get these guys back onto rodents by hook or crook, so I'll try the scenting plan you suggest. It's tricky though, as they have both become more and more skittish as they've grown. They will only take the fish if left alone with the live fish in their bowls for a period. Then they'll dart out, grab one, fly back into their hides and repeat the process ten minutes later.

I understand that in the wild San Frans predominantly eat the red-legged frog, but most keepers report that they can get them onto rodents from a young age. I'm not sure why mine have turned away from them.

I did wonder if they were getting the instinct to brumate, and so were avoiding anything but the most tempting, wiggling food. But but the time that occured to me they had started to lose weight, so I wasn't happy to put them into hibernation this year.

I've read elsewhere on the forum that guppies are safe from thiaminase, so I might try those next time. but generally speaking I'll try them on a range of things and see how I get on. They previously refused earthworms, so it looks like they aren't an option. I hope these guys aren't going to keep this up as this evening they've eaten £30 (about $50) worth of Danios, and I can't do that twice a week!

Cheers

Conners

[Conners]

omg i thought this was my thread lol jk

Don't worry, I'm just borrowing it for a minute!

[Dameco13]

y would u even pay that much for 1 days food?

[Conners]

y would u even pay that much for 1 days food?

Because the snakes have to eat and right now live fish are the only things they'll take.