Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was wondering how would u keep sea snakes in a captive setting?. Would u have to keep them in a marine tank with some dry land in the tank and would u have to feed them live fish thanks?.

Very few institutions keep any of the Hydrophiidae (or sea dwelling elapids if you prefer) successfully, and no private persons do (to my knowledge, that is). I believe Dr. Bryan Fry, who posts here with some regularity, has managed to keep a number of species at his institution in Australia. Hopefully he will come on here and comment further. The St. Louis Zoo, which has the most impressive collection of herptiles I've personally ever seen, has banded sea kraits, or at least one. Unfortunately it is very good at hiding and I couldn't glimpse even so much as a scale or two when I was there. There is a private operation north of me in Branson, MO, where the owner claims to eventually be getting some true sea snakes for his collection. The only way I can see that happening is if he can get them before the ASPCA shuts him down for his deplorable conditions. If you were to try to keep them, of course you would need a marine tank which is very large. Depending on the species, you might need dry land (sea braits) or not (pretty much everything else). They would probably be fairly particular in wanting the species of fish that frequent their home habitat. With the equipment and feeding costs, I can't really see this being a worthwhile investment unless you just happen to have more money than you know what to do with. Not to mention you'll be pretty hard pressed to find any importer that could bring them into the country. Basically it would be a pretty moot operation. Your best bet is to contact Dr. Fry through any of his posts on here or at venomdoc.com and see what he has to say on the subject.
-Chance

I wrote a paper of Hydrophiid keeping that was publisehed some 2 years ago email me.

Scott

>>I was wondering how would u keep sea snakes in a captive setting?. Would u have to keep them in a marine tank with some dry land in the tank and would u have to feed them live fish thanks?.

It depends on which flavour of sea snake you are talking about.

The sea kraits (Laticauda) are quite easy to keep, needing only a moderate amount of space as well as a small area of land.

The true sea snakes (various genera such as Acalyptophis, Aipysurus, Enhydrina, Hydrophis, Lapemis, Pelamis etc.) are much more space intensive. We have been keeping them extensively for over four years and they are a considerable amount of work. They are space intensive (ours live in a 100,000 litre coral tank) as well as some being so ultra-specialised that they are virtually impossible to keep alive in captivity. Further, they are much more prone to stress related ailments than land snakes. Their metabolism is screaming fast due to the necessity to swim up to the surface every 20-30 minutes. They are more of a fish than a snake in their need for often feeding. As such, if they go off their food for even two weeks they are so weak that they usually don't recover. Complicating matters is that they are impossible to force feed, they almost always puke it up (very easy to do in zero gravity). If they stress out they will go off food for at least a week. Quite a long time in this scenario. The two species we have found to be the best are Aipysurus laevis (Olive sea snake) and Lapemis curtus (Spine-bellied sea snake). We are hoping to breed the spine-bellieds this year, this would be the first captive breeding of them.

If you have any more Qs, feel free to ask them here

All the best
Bryan
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Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry
Deputy Director
Australian Venom Research Unit
University of Melbourne

www.venomdoc.com

Er, BGF, maybe when you've been keeping snakes a little longer than a few short years, you'll actually learn how to keep them alive, er and identify them properly.
20 years ago, people were keeping sea snakes in Sydney in much smaller tanks and without hassles.
LOL!