Reptile & Amphibian Forums

n/p

DAVE

Yes and no. 20 gal. is fine for one snake. Snakes should not be kept together. They will fight over food. If one becomes sick, keeping them together insures that the other snake will also get sick.

Good luck with your snakes.

Hi there:

I usually keep my snakes in huge tanks, so a 20-gallon is kind of new to me. As for the feeding issue, I keep many snakes together. When it comes time to feed them, I take them both out of the tank and place them in seperate snake bags to feed in. I definately agree with you that if two rat snakes grabbed the same rodent... it wouldn't be pretty!
Now I am just left with the issue of disease. Whenever I am about to place a snake in with another, I isolate it, feeding it at least three times. I watch for signs of sickness and moniter its behavior extremely carefully.
Thank you very much for sharing your concerns with me. You made some good points. I know that this arrangement may sound cramped. It's just that these guys curl up tucked away for a long time in their hides, and move really slowly. I definately am not one to keep a snake in a small space. My baby Sonoran gopher snake is in a 75 gallon desrt setup. My tiny baby Kenyan sand boa is in a 10-gallon savannah terrarium. My pair of baby rough green snakes about 4 inches long are in a 20-gallon woodland habitat. My ribbon snakes are in a 40-gallon swampland, and then there's the 20g-gallon...

Happy Herping!

DAVE

dave....do you have like 4 hide spots in your tank? (2 on the hot side 2 on the cool side....one for each of 'em?) or do they share one hide spot? I have a neonate black ratsnake, and a licorice stick black rat. the licorice stick is about 25 inches long, the neonate about 20. i have the lic stk in a 29 gal, the neonate in a 20 long. I would love to consoldate them but im unsure of the tank setup.

here's a picture of the bigger tank

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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -Unknown

Hi there:

I have a HUGE piece of cork bark covering the entire back of the tank with a gap behind it so that the snakes can be completely out of view with the sides of their bodies touching two walls. I have a big bushy plant covering the front of the cork that they curl up tightly in to rest in the branches. They could also climb up the side of the cork. The one I already have also tends to burrow and lie below the layers of substrate a lot. There is a pile of sturdy rocks back in the corner, with plenty of dead leaves, a large water basin, and thin vines and twigs strung from the ceiling mesh. It may sound cramped, but the one I've got really enjoys it, and he only seems calm in it.
I got a great deal on him because when I bought him he was starving to death, but now he's looking really great.

DAVE

Actually monitering your snakes (while a good idea) is not adequate protection from disease. Unfortunately a number of disease problems do not show recogniseable symptoms till the condition has become severe. By that time all snakes in the same tank will be contaminated.

For example: several years ago I knew a dealer who had the habit of placing his snakes together. A particularly virolent form of mouth rot developed in his stock. He sold snakes to several people that looked healthy and then after a few weeks would show signs of the infection. Unfortunatly he also did breeding loans which contaminated even more snakes when his healthy(?)breeders were introduced to potential mates.

This became so much of a problem (before everyone caught on)that the disease was nick-named after the dealer.

No amount of initial quarentine will guarentee that snakes are not infected later on. It's just practical to keep individual cages rather than risk losing a pair in one shot.

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

Hi there:

You've got some great points there. I guess the main isuue here is just personal experience. I have had great luck keeping two snakes together; even different species, as long as they are similar. Not that I'm for hybrids or anything like that. It's just that sometimes if two snakes temperatures and captive requirements are the same, and things like humidity and lighting, I sometimes keep them together. For example, keeping eastern ribbon snakes with rough green snakes or keeping a yellow rat snake with a normal corn snake about the same size.
Personal experience affects the way we feel about many things in our life. I don't think I recall any of my specimens dying of diseases. However, like I said you made some really great points, and thank you for your warnings. I hope we can talk rat snakes more in the future.

DAVE

I have a licorice stick female and a black rat neonate male, het for lic stk's. The lic stk is about 25" long, the neonate around 22". I was considering giving it a shot to breed them once they grow older. Right now for the past couple weeks they have bene living in seperate tanks, and I have 2 hiding spots in each tank. I'm seriously considering combining them into one tank (half half the power required to heat them, and my room stays too warm for me as it is due to my computer equipment).

My question is this. How should I introduce them? I have the licorice stick in a 29 gallon, the neonate in a 20 long....approx same base size. Should I just put the neonate in the tank with the lic stk or should I introduce them outside of the tank like have one on each arm...or what? Also what would somewhat worry me is that the neonate is very very active and the lic stk is very subdued...like when i'm holding them and such. Any opinions would be great! Thanks
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -Unknown

I wouldn't consider putting them together until they are the same size. Juveniles can stress out with out having a critter twice their size competing with them.
Lora

well as i stated one is 22 or so inches, one is 25 or so inches. how much closer do they need to be?
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -Unknown

Sorry about that, I was just remembering a previous post where you said your licorice stick was a year and a half old. Neonates are usually quite a bit smaller than a year and a half old snake, but they all grow at different rates. Most of my rat snakes do a lot of growing in a year. For introductions, I wouldn't worry about it much, other than at feeding time. They've probably smelled each other on you and in the room, if you keep them near one another. I prefer not to keep snakes together for health reasons, but some people do. If I were to keep snakes in the same cage, I'd probably only keep adults of the same size together, when they were old enough to breed.
Good luck.
Lora

I'm going to keep them seperated, and keep my new two bairds together when I get them in my 10 gallon tank...they're CB 2004.

Thanks,
Chris
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -Unknown