Young Garter Not Eating

[gibble888]

My advise was not for you anyway.

[d_virginiana]

Your advice was flawed. Feeding safe fish is perfectly fine and a practice condoned and carried out by many people on this forum, as well as supported in the caresheet.

[BLUESIRTALIS]

Easy guyz, lol! We all have our opinions on what's safe for our beloved animals and this debate has been going on for years. A good reptile keeper would do as much research as they can on an animal before taking the word of one hobbyist anyways. I personally only use fish now as a last resort. I had bad luck with live guppies due to parasites and some frozen tilapia years ago, but come to find out it was the chemicals that the tilapia was treated with. Now i buy fresh tilapia or catch bluegill and clean them and freeze for a few months in case i get an animal that prefers fish or won't eat anything else and as soon as i can i scent and switch them over to mice and nightcrawlers. Now i will occasionally give my adults a treat of fish if i'm running low on mice. In my opinion though i wouldn't use fish as a staple due to the heavy metals in fish and because i like to vary their diet. I also think that fish makes their poo more smelly, lol. I also had a higher success rate on the babies I started out on nightcrawlers and mice parts vs the ones I started on fish. Just my opinion!

[d_virginiana]

I primarily use fish to either get young ones eating or when my oldest one goes off other food. Accidentally ended up with my own guppy colony lol.

I'm not saying fish is the best thing ever, but I feel like to blatantly say that feeding all fish is bad is unfair as it doesn't give someone all the information they need to make an informed choice on it, especially if someone doesn't really know what the problem with the fish was.

[gibble888]

The probloem i had WAS with fish and i know it for a fact...maybe you dont have the same prob thats fine. I just didnt want to see someone have the same outcome as i did and may been extreme in my no fish comment. I've done searches on snakes that are acting odd...like trying to bite their ear off and found sally silversides being mentioned most of the time.

[d_virginiana]

The probloem i had WAS with fish and i know it for a fact...maybe you dont have the same prob thats fine. I just didnt want to see someone have the same outcome as i did and may been extreme in my no fish comment. I've done searches on snakes that are acting odd...like trying to bite their ear off and found sally silversides being mentioned most of the time.

I can get on board with that. I'm all for telling people stories about personal experiences, so long as it lets them make a choice on their own.