Feeder Fish without Thiaminase?

[allyneko223]

Okay, I am planning on getting a garter snake in the next month or so.
While they will not be my first garter snake, I only recently learned of thiaminase. Are there any feeder fish I can buy from the pet store that does not contain this chemical? Like pladdies or guppies, anything?
I will be supplementing the snake with other foods as well, but I prefer to feed them fish.

[slipknot711]

u can feed them guppies and mollies etc but gets rather expensive. i started buying frozen fish filets and cutting it into strips. might be a better cheaper alternative?

[d_virginiana]

Couple problems; any live feeder fish you get from a pet store carry a huge risk of parasites and things like guppies should really only be used if you have a baby that won't eat anything else.

Second, an adult garter is way to big to feed guppies. Many petstores sell f/t silversides which are safe. However, many people have had issues feeding fish as a primary source. I wouldn't recommend feeding fish of any sort as a primary feeder. Worms or pinkies are preferable.

[Albert Clark]

Hello and what Lora is saying is absolutely true. However a few of the fish that don't contain thiaminase are bass, cod, flounder, perch and trout. Also tilapia is a common fish offered to garters. Remember that garters need the whole prey including organs to remain healthy. Frozen and fresh fish should not be the staple. Pink mice and pink rats and nightcrawlers are better choices. Ideally the night crawlers and worms should be cut up into small manageable pieces. Frozen/ thawed frog legs can be a nice treat for garters as well. They also may need to be cut up depending on the size of the snake. That should read frozen /thawed and fresh fish should not be the staple.

[d_virginiana]

To add onto what Albert said, we have had members in the past who bought safe species of fish from the grocery store to feed and ended up with dead snakes due to a preservative they didn't know was in them. Similarly you have to worry about contamination/pollution in wild caught fish. It's just something you need to be really careful about if you do it.

IMO fish should be an option to have on hand for when you have snakes that are refusing all other foods.
I currently have a tank of feeder guppies in case I end up with any non-eating young ones this year (I had a few feeders left alive after getting my nearly ftt baby eating last year and couldn't bring myself to just flush them. Now I have about fifty).

[joeysgreen]

With live or freshly killed fish thiaminase is not a problem. The above posters have discussed other issues regarding using fish as prey.

[d_virginiana]

Could you please provide your source that says thiaminase is not a problem with live or freshly killed fish?

I just ask because I have read articles about European mustelids that have developed thiaminase related neurological issues from eating wild caught (so obviously fresh-killed) fish. Also, I have also heard that goldfish and rosy-reds should not be fed (even live) due to their production of thiaminase. I don't mean to contradict you, but this seems contrary to the bulk of evidence that I've seen, so I'd be interested in seeing the source/sources.

[allyneko223]

Thanks for the input, everyone. I'll be relying on worms more than fish, but there aren't many bait stores near me (even though I live not even a block away from a lake) and the pet stores tend to run out of worms pretty quickly.
Is there a connection there? I don't know, but fish tend to be in better stock.

[joeysgreen]

I"ll see if I can dig something up Lora. I recently discussed this with the vet at the Tulsa zoo and with my vet at OSU regarding another recent thread on the topic. My literature search was less than rewarding with nothing very specific to the topic. Below is my understanding of the topic and it by all means could be flawed.

Thiamine of course is the water soluble Vitamin B1. Thiaminase is an intracellular enzyme. It is how a cell breaks down and utilizes thiamine (upon further study it actually is used to break up thiamin in order to use it's components... for what, I don't yet know). When you freeze the fish, as with any freeze intolerant animal (some frogs, hatchling turtles and invertebrates being the exception), the water in the tissue expands and breaks open the cells. This releases the thiaminase to break down the extracellular thiamin (there are 3 fluid compartments in animals, intracellular, extracellular and vascular). So this means that any frozen fish is a problem. The zoos use a "flash frozen" fish which freezes fast enough and cold enough so that it somehow limits the combination of the thiamin and it's enzyme. They have to thaw it a certain way (either really fast, or really slow I don't remember) and they still supplement with thiamine. Being water soluble it is very difficult to overdose Vitamin B1 because excess is readily excreted in the urine. Vitamin C is another water soluble vitamin if that's more familiar.

So my literature search has found lots of studies that measure thiamine metabolism but I have yet to pinpoint the actual cellular interaction between thiaminase and thiamin, and how that interplays in every day life. I did find that some ferns, a African silk worm and various carp (that would include goldfish, but I can't find a source on it so don't know if it's just regurged material) perhaps have excess thiaminase that would create an imbalance if fed raw. This may give merit to feeding raw goldfish causing thiamine deficiency, but it doesn't give merit to the safety of other frozen fish food, which would still have the problem of cellular distruction and enzyme release.

If I have a bit of free time tomorrow I'll try to search for the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics of thiaminase. (where it travels through the body, and how it acts as it passes through the body)

Ian

[d_virginiana]

Interesting. I know the problem with silkworms and thiaminase has come up on some frog forums I'm on. I think the majority of the real worries with thiaminase come from the feeding of live rosy reds or feeder goldfish rather than f/t stuff since safe fish such as tilapia seem to be the more easily and cheaply acquired frozen options. I actually don't think I've ever seen someone asking about a frozen source that isn't on the safelist just because those aren't so common...

I think not much is known about the thiaminase issue, even in regards to feeding what are considered 'dangerous' species. Some people can do it for years and have no problems while others can do it once or twice and begin to see the neurological symptoms of the vitamin deficiency. Scientific debate aside, I probably wouldn't recommend even frozen thiaminase-containing fish as feeders just because there are so many options where we know for certain it isn't a risk.