Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi Everyone-
I wanted to find out some info on keeping Green Anacondas. I currently breed several different species (Retics, Burms, Bloods) but I saw a large female Green a few weeks ago and thought it was one of the most striking animals I've ever seen. I keep all my snakes in one room and heat the entire space, as their temp/ humidity needs are all pretty similar. My question is could I do the same with an Anaconda? the temps stay steady at 82-88 and the humidity is between 60%-70%, but there's no temp gradient or basking spots. My various pythons are kept happy in these conditions, but I'm not sure if the requirements of an Anaconda would be met or not. I also wanted to find out about the water requirements of Greens. I know they're largely aquatic in the wild... is that something that needs to be mimicked in captivity, or can they live happily with only drinking water? I've heard mixed reviews on this, so I figured I'd come here to ask the experts. Any help you folks could give me would be great. Thanks!

From my experience with greens, they typically seem to prefer a substrate temperature of 80 to 85 degrees. I keep mine at a humidity range the same as yours, so I would say that the environmental conditions you describe should work out well. There was a disscussion just a few days ago on the issue of large water sources for captive greens and I will insert part of my original response below:

Jud and I have raised all of our breeder greens from newborns to adults with the only water source being a small drinking bowl. We have successfully bred two unrelated females and produced three litters from them in the last five years. All of our greens are raised in this manner and we have never had any health issues with them. The fact that they grow to a large, healthy adult size and successfully reproduce, seems to indicate that large water sources are not essential to this species in the captive environment, as they seem to do quite well without them. We feel that as easily stressed as greens are, they would not be reproducing for us to this degree if lack of a pool were causing them much stress at all. However, I would say that access to large water sources is obviously important in their natural environment, as a source of food and for protection from predators. We will be attempting to breed an unrelated third female this winter, so if successful, this will further support our husbandry technique. One additional point, we feel that keeping them with just a small water bowl needs to be started from birth. Once they become acclimated to a large water source, it would probably be very stressful to the snake to suddenly be deprived access to it.

Hope this information helped.

Kelly

Does the temp. range of 82-88 represent nightly low and daily high temps, or could your room run in the upper 80's for extended periods? If this is a daily temperature fluctuation this would probably work as I said before, but the upper 80's for extended periods would be a little too warm for greens.

Kelly

The roughly 82-88 degree temps are pretty variant throughout the day, at least during the summertime. The thermostat kicks on at 82, so it never drops lower than that, but if it's say 100 degrees all day outside, that might run the temps up to 88 or so. In the wintertime when it's always colder outside than in, the temp stays right at 82-83 degrees without much variance at all. How high is too high for a green? My retics don't get antsy unless it's exceptionally hot (over 90 degrees) for more than a few hours but that almost never happens. If it would just be a matter of tightening up the temp range a few degrees to accomidate a green, I could accomplish that by simply turning the A/C a bit cooler in my house. Thank you so much for all the info by the way!

I believe that temps in the upper 80's are too high for a greens unless they are digesting a large meal or gravid and gestating. Otherwise I have noticed that they will typically avoid substrate temps in a cage that are over the mid-80's. Either way they should have an area that is slightly cooler if the warm area of the cage is above 85 F.

Kelly