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RE: How do I care for my hatchling snapper?

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Posted by: futureboabreeder at Sun May 10 03:47:44 2009  [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by futureboabreeder ]  
   

20 gallon will do fine, keep the water only about 4 inches high. A basking light and something to crawl out of the water onto. I also throw in these really thin plastic see weed plants just to give the little guys something to get up to and hang on as they don't tread water to well and are pretty clumsy swimmers when they are young. This isn't necissary if you got a stone in there for him to climb up on, but it seems to aid them in getting around the tank.



Guppies, crickets are good sources of food. Gonna need a filter for the guppies, but if he is still in the process of mastering his mobility in the water he might have trouble catching them all the time. Thats why I'd keep a few dozen crickets handy in a tub with potatoes to eat. That way you can toss a few in there and make sure hes eating every day.



He'll grow fast and turn into eating machine within a month or two. They'll eat just about everything. At that point if you find some small frogs, like the little dry land frogs I find hopping around or under logs he'll love those(they LOVE frogs). No toads, the poison glands will bother him and release toxins into his water. Don't bother with earthworms, I learned the hard way how easy it is for a turtle to choke on them. If the frog thing makes your stomache queezy thats fine he'll live without them. I always feed em frogs because #1: I eventually let them go once they're about the size of my hand and eating frogs early on teaches them how to really hunt. I guess thats the fun of

wild snappers, you could go outside for a cigarette and come back in with his dinner.



great turtles to keep, I usually fatten em up and set em free in this mud creek near my house that has a pretty nice little snapper community for such a small creek. Or sometimes I'll raise em up big enough and let them go in this forest preserve lake that sometimes season to season gets cleaned out of baby snappers because of too many big birds eating them.(I got turtle hunting there a few times a week).



But if you plan on keeping him long, plan on him getting BIG... which also means lots of poo.


   

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