Chances are it may have been CB, just not CBB. People that breed Thamnophis usually breed garter snakes, not ribbon snakes. A diet of fish is best. Unlike their garter snake relatives, ribbon snakes rarely if ever take f/t pinks. I have kept dozens of Eastern Ribbon Snakes (Thamnophis sauritus) over my life and have always given them a diet of fish, cricket frogs, invasive greenhouse frogs, BABY toads, and earth worms.

Feeder fish are an okay staple but I would variate the diet as these fish are not as nutritious as a pond / lake captured fish. What I did is I did breed my own, but not a store-bought species. I filled up a 30 gallon storage container with water, mud, and some plants from the swamp behind my house. I let it fill up with mosquitoes for a few weeks and then I dumped in 40 Mosquito Fish. They ate up the mosquitoes, and began to breed and produce my own stock of mosquito fish. The mosquito fish will eat red worms, earth worms, black worms, and blood worms (mosquito larvae) as well so keeping them fed is no problem. As ribbon snakes get larger small sunfish and kilifish are good too. Point is, they are mainly fish eaters. A variation of fish is good to use, but from experience I just don't like using normal feeder fish as they are like junk-food and they tend to stop eating other fish. The chances are that the Ribbon Snake was wild caught as I said above, so catching fish from local ponds (if it was a local ribbon snake) should be no issue.

Adding small frogs to the diet if they are not protected in your area is good too. Thamnophis of all specific epithets love small frogs. Earth worms are very nutritious and these, unless you use pesticide/herbicide in your yard, can be obtained in your yard. I usually collect my earth worms from fertilizer free areas of a yard that does use fertilizer (my yard).

Eastern Ribbon Snakes are semi-aquatic snakes that also love to climb. A large water dish for their fish and soaking is good to have too.

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