Hi everybody,

I have tried finding a reliable, trustworthy care sheet for milksnakes, and a bit of information about them before I purchase one. I even searched through the archived forum posts, but even though my queries gave me hundreds of hits, 99% of the results I found didn't answer my questions. So I apologize if most of this is common knowledge for regulars.

Which subspecies of milksnake routinely become the largest in captivity. Actually, I would like a complete list of average lengths for the most common pet species and their absolute total maximum size. Maybe that's asking too much.

What are the major differences between Nelson's Milksnake and a Sinaloan Milksnake. They look identical to me, and some places simply say the Sinaloan is bigger. If that's true, how much bigger and what is the average size for either of them? How much overlap is there? Are there really differences or is a small snake a Nelson's and a big snake a Sinaloan and really they're genetically the same?

The root of these questions is that my wife and, who currently have 1 corn snake and 1 ball python, would like to add a milksnake (or kingsnake) to our collection. We're limited on space and of course personal taste in color will play a role. We just don't want to buy a snake anticipating a certain size and then find out we were wrong. Ideally, we would like an animal that could comfortably live its life (or at least the first 4-5 years) in a 20L (30"x12"x12" tank. Bigger tanks are always better, but she and I are both in school (read living in a small apartment) and won't be graduating (read moving to a larger location) for some time.

Any and all (free) information would be totally awesome!
Thanks and have a good day!

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