Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a customer that wants to trade me a young adult ETB for some work on her aquariums. She doesn't have much experience with them and doesn't seem to have time to dedicate to it. I have no experience with ETB's but I have wanted one for a long time. It is hard to pass this offer up for free. She currently has it house in an all glass aquarium in a high trafic area of her house. The bottom of the tank is about 2" of water with a vertical heat gradient of low 80's to the high 80's. She said it hasn't eaten for her but that the wholesaler (LLL Reptile) said that it had eaten for them. I am assuming that it is a wild caught and I don't know if it is a northern of basin. I am going to keep it in a room that stays warm and the humidity ranges from 70-85%. (my fish room) I am going to get a thermostat to warm it up just a bit and spray it to increase the daytime humidity a bit. (the humidity drops in the room during the day because of the open window) Does this sound like a waste of time? If I do trade her what should I do in order to get it to eat. I was going to set it up with the right conditions and then leave it alone and out of traffic for a couple weeks before trying to feed it. She said that she thought it had a resp. infection when she got it because it was gurgling when breathing but that has gone away. Is there any specific questions that I should ask her?

Sorry for the long post and thanks for the help.

Mike

Hi
I won't go into any detail on a public forum, but i would not trust LLL reptile's word that the animal has eaten. If it is not alot of problem for you to do the tank work, get the animal and try to nurse it along. Get ready to possibly have some hi vet bills and still lose it. Sounds like it won't do very well in it's present situation anyways. Good luck

Hey Mike,
I have been keeping ETB's since '98. I have purchased both CBB and WC. I would imagine that the animal in question is WC. Just my experience with WC animals, we have purchased 13 WC northerns of which 3 survived past 18 months. All of them ate for us, but the kicker was that they all puked. Too much time being dehydrated prior to our aquiring the animals had caused irrepairable kidney damage. We spent a lot of money on vet bills but nothing could really be done. Just realize that any WC emerald is a gamble and one that hasn't eaten isn't a good risk in my opinion.
CraigC

sounds like the consesus is that the snake is doomed no matter what. I think I will go ahead and give it a shot because I don't think it is in any better shape in her hands. I will post how it is doing.

Well I picked the snake up yesterday. It seems that the number onw thing that was wrong was the humidity. The RH was only 50% despite there being a ton of water in the tank. I brought it home and the humidity is already 70-80%. He/she was pretty active yesterday and was drinking from its suspended water dish when I picked it up. How long should I wait until I try to feed it? It has already been a few weeks since it has eaten (supposedly). It is about 18" long. Is a hopper mouse appropriate? Final question, can you tell visually if it is a northern or a basin? I will post a picture later.

Thanks
Mike