Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I WAS JUST CURIOUS WHAT PEOPLE ARE DOING WITH ADULT GREENS, I AM VERY FAMILIAR WITH CAGING AND DO HAVE ELABORATE ENCLOSURES. MY BURMS ARE IN 10X4X4 ENCLOSURES, MY BOAS(VARIOUS TYPES)ARE IN SIX FOOT VISIONS, NOT TO MENTION MY FIVE FOOT SPEC. CAIMAN THAT RENTS A ROOM OF HIS OWN. FOR HIS ENCLOSURE I SIMPLY BUILT A SUB FLOOR AND RAISED IT 22" AND SUNK A 250 GAL POND IN THE FRAME. INDOOR OUTDOOR CARPET IS USED AS WELL AS NUMEROUS FAKE TREES FROM WALMART. I BUILT MY OWN FILTER AND DEHUMIDIFIER. I LIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA AND SPEND MUCH TIME AT ALLIGATOR ADVENTURE, AS WELL AS THE EDISTO ISLAND SERPENTARIUM. I DO NOT BREED, JUST KEEPING AND CARING FOR THESE WONDERFUL CREATURES IS MY PASSION. I ENJOY READING YOUR FORUM, I HAVE BEEN READING FORUMS FOR YEARS, I JUST NEVER POSTED ANYTHING UNTIL NOW. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE, I WILL TRY TO GET SOME PICS OF MY SNAKES ECT.ECT. AND POST THEM. JASON

Hi, Jason
I would love to see your caiman's room. I myself live in SC near Spartanburg, Laurens. I have a yellow conda, aquatic turtles, 3-toed amphiuma, fire belly newts, paddletail newts and other non-herp pets. A Fellow SC Herper, Physignathus a.k.a. Macroclemys, CrownedOne, Steven

Jason,
I maintain my adult greens in 8 by 3 foot cages. I feel that this is of adjacent size for females up to 13 or 14 feet. Without a pool taking up floor area, this size of cage appears to be sufficient. When females approach 15 feet, the floor area of the cage will need to be increased. There are two schools of thought on the water question with green anacondas. One group follows the quite logical reasoning that there must be a water pool available that they can submerge into in order for them to do well in captivity. The other, much smaller group, feels that a pool is not necessary and they will do quite well in captivity without it. Through my years of maintaining greens, I have definitely become part of this second group. It is not a question of one way being better for the anacondas than the other, but a matter of choice and time commitment. Attentive owners have raised greens successfully with access to large pools, without any problems. On the other hand, many more snakes have suffered because these pools became fouled with feces for lack of proper maintenance. Small greens utilize small water containers that are easily cleaned in a few minutes. As greens grow, you start getting into water containers of 50 to 100 gallons and up, and then you start getting into a major cleaning commitment of time and labor to keep it as sanitary as it needs to be. It is totally a matter of choice. My view is if greens really needed access to large pools, I would go through the time and effort required. But Jud and I have found that green anacondas do very well in captivity without access to pools, even to the point that we have produced two litters of young from two different females over the last few years. Both females and the male had never had access to any water other than a large drinking bowl. Green anacondas can stress fairly easily if proper environmental conditions are not met, and I feel that if they were stressed at all by the lack of a pool, they would more than likely have never successfully reproduced. All of our breeding adults have been raised and maintained from newborns, without access to water other than a small drinking bowl, and we have not encountered health problems of any kind using this system. It is I believe, necessary to raise greens without pools from the time they are born in order to be successful in keeping them without access to these soaking pools. We do maintain a higher humidity with the young but have only done so with the adults during shedding periods. Just my thoughts on the subject.

Kelly

"It is I believe, necessary to raise greens without pools from the time they are born in order to be successful in keeping them without access to these soaking pools."

Based on this statement I assume you anticipate me having stress related problems when I remove the water tub when it becomes too much of a burdon for me to keep clean. Is this correct? What about a gradual reduction in the days she has the soaking tub? Maybe gradually reduce the number of days per week that she has access to a soaking tub. Then just when she sheds. Finally none at all. I am not in a serious hurry to get the tub out right now as it is still manageable for me but would like to start coming up with a plan for the future since I will not be having a super large soaking tub when she is 14' . Any advice Kelly?

Arik

Arik,
Most greens that I know of that have been raised for some time with pools and then had them permanently removed later, have shown various signs of stress. However, from speaking with these people, I have found that all of them removed the pools without any type of phased acclimation period as you are looking at. A slow phasing out of the pool over a 6 month to one year period might work. This would be worth a try and I would be interested in the outcome. Let me know when you start and how the acclimation progresses. Thanks,

Kelly

Thank you so much for all the info. It really helps out alot and answered all my questions. Are you using newspaper for the substrate or some form of mulch. For my burms I use those cage liners that are in the classifides, they work great. Again thank you for the reply. Jason

although the cage liners are quite similar.

Kelly