Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi

Just wanted to share my joy.

My two females have laid two nice clutches of 7 and 6 eggs - the first litter hatched 100% yesterday after 22 days of incubation - I love this snake

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Regards

Jan Grathwohl

HERPBREEDER.com - The Herpetological database

GECKOHOLICS.dk

nm

Hi Jan,

Nice dione! We have had this year 43 dione hatchlings. I realy hope more people come interested in this nice species!

here two pics of hatchlings of this year:

This is chersky x tiger:

This is striped:

Those are some very nice, interesting looking snakes. I am getting more and more interested in the Eurasian rats and am planning on getting some bimaculatas next year. Maybe I'll try to get a pair of diones also. -Toby

Hey Gidi,

Your animals are doing great, growing much quicker than what you might expect from such a small snake.

Best regards,

Herman.

PS. I noticed that the Chinese dione's are a little bit more sensitive to heat than the Mongolian (Altai) and Manchurian (Chersky) dione's. Is it a high altitude population?

Hey Herman,

I realy don't know. I never meet such problem with heating in diones. What temps do you keep them? I know china's need more heat than other diones, but not much, and when you keep them at 27 degrees it should not be any problem.

Best regards,
Gidi
Link

Hello again,

I keep the Chinese dione the way I keep all my juvenile ratsnakes: in 5 gallon plastic containers with partial (1/3) floorheating. This works great for most of my ratsnakes, including the Altai and Chersky dione, but not for the Chinese dione. Now that I've shut down the heating devices the Chinese dione's are doing much better. To me it seems that the Elaphe dione from central China actually does better at lower temperatures compared to other, more northern populations of Elaphe dione. This reminds me of another Chinese ratsnake species I once used to keep, Elaphe carinata, which is known to be a high altitude species. So that's why I asked.

Best regards,

Herman.

Very nice diones your hatching this year - keep them coming
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Regards

Jan Grathwohl

HERPBREEDER.com - The Herpetological database

GECKOHOLICS.dk

>>Hi Jan,
>>
>>Nice dione! We have had this year 43 dione hatchlings. I realy hope more people come interested in this nice species!
>>
>>here two pics of hatchlings of this year:
>>
>>This is chersky x tiger:
>>
>>
>>
>>This is striped:
>>
>>

Diones have to be one of my all time favourite Ratsnakes ... tis a shame they are not that popular here in the UK.
I used to keep them about 15 years ago and have got the bug again .. I got a couple of female hatchling yellow striped and a grey striped from Chrystal Palace Reptiles recently.
Sorry for my ignorance but do you get both grey and yellow within the same cluch ... the photo you have looks like greys and yellow but could possibly just a couple of them in shed? Any info on the striped diones you could pass on would be most appreciated.
Thankyou
Sue x

Hi,

Yes we get a mix of colours, grey and yellow, also dorsal striped! But non of them was 100% grey, also a bit of green.
We have also pure yellow and pure grey striped diones in our colelction:
btw that grey striped is in shed, normally much "greyer"

btw the site www.rareratsnakes.com is not yet available!

Best regards,

Gidi
Link

Congratulations--joy is a wonderful thing, especially when it comes to baby snakes--thanks for sharing!

rgds,
altea

Congrats on the babies, a lovely little species, they should be more popular. By all accounts they are a great species to keep, very attractive too.
Kind regards, Dev.
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Devboy.