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I have heard conflicting reports on goldfish as a suitable food for garter snakes. I recently caught a Western Blackneck Garter that loves them. Should I consider some alternate food type, or stick with the goldfish?

I've heard/read conflicting reports myself. I'd say if your Black neck garter will take rosy reds and/or guppies, that would be the safer way to go. I don't know enough on the goldfish issue to give you an imformed answer. If you can switch him over to rodents, even better. Good luck.
Steve

>>have heard conflicting reports on goldfish as a suitable food for garter snakes. I recently caught a Western Blackneck Garter that loves them. Should I consider some alternate food type, or stick with the goldfish?

I believe that goldfish have an enzyme called thiaminase that makes thiamine unavailable. This can result in a nutritional deficiency if goldfish are a major long term staple. I have a western blackneck that also really liked goldfish. What I did is freeze a bunch of goldfish. Thaw and wash a dead or f/t pinky mouse, and then take a goldfish head and put a little "hat" on the pinky and offer it to the snake. Over the next three weeks I decreased the amount of goldfish offered with the weekly pinky while always offering the pinky in the same location. After about three weeks mine started taking washed unscented pinkys (mouse smell seemed to be a big turn-off so washing can be important). After about six weeks mine started taking unwashed pre-killed pinkys. I'd tried other methods of getting mine to take pinkys prior to this that ended in failure, but the preceding worked really well. They seem more challenging to convert than some of the other garters.

-Alice

Just so you'll know, rosy reds (a colored form of the fathead minnow) also contain thiminase. They're no better than goldfish. I currently feed my baby garters guppies and mosquito fish. I assume that they're safe since they don't appear on any list of thiaminase containing fish.

http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Articles/Thiaminase.htm

i feed night crawlers,mice/pinkys,goldfish,rosys,guppies,and even can cat food sometimes...

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Thanks for the info. So far my snake is a ravenous fish feeder (goldfish, guppies and mosquito fish), and I haven't been able to get him interested in eating anything else. His taste in fish probably comes from a stream (which is populated with mosquito fish) near where he was caught.