Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I already posted this in the rear-fanged section... figured I'd get a quicker answer here.

I was reading in another post that housing 2 FWC together was a bad idea. Is this true? Will 2 similar sized snakes of this species really eat each other?

Also, I have never researched much on breeding snakes before. I was wondering, as I plan on purchasing a pair of snakes from the same hatch. Is inbreeding a problem with snakes? Let me know if I need to get 2 FWC's from diff. sources to be able to breed them. Thanks!

I'm not sure if annibalism has been observed in Hydrodynastes or not (though I tend to believe it has been), but they do have insatiable appetites, so housing two specimens together (especially where one is significantly larger than the other one) is not advisable. Females tend to be larger and grow faster than males, so the chances that you would have two similarly sized specimens (for very long at least) are not great. In addition, they tend to be VERY excitable during feeding time, and dealing with two food-crazed snakes at one time is not fun at all. Feeding them seperately ensures having to only deal with one insane snake at a time.

Personally...I really don't like housing any snakes together unless it's for breeding purposes. You can do it for many different species, but in my opinion, Hydrodynastes is not one of them.

As for breeding...unrelated specimens are ideal, but breeding related individuals together is not neccesarily a bad thing...the entire morph market is based on inbreeding (at least in it's early stages). As long as snakes aren't inbred over generations, the likelihood of negative traits making themselves known are pretty slim.

Thank you very much, very informative

Good luck.

I kept my FWC's separate except for when breeding was attempted. Thye would spend a week together and never showed any sign of cannibalism, but a whole lot of doing the nasty.

The bad new was it never took. My female plumped and then slimmed never laying any eggs.

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

Snakes that eat other snakes can consume others LARGER than themselves, so same-sized snakes would be no problem. They can certainly consume more than their body weight in one meal, especially if the meal is skinny and easy to get down.
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"I'll be back at 6 if not 7. 8 the very latest but definatly no later than 9...ish...Moscow time."