Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My roommate and I just bought a lovely little garter snake named Gavin. I did some research and it seems that fish and worms would be an adequate diet for him. He's already proven that he very readily eats both. We gave him four rosies in his water bowl, all of which all disappeared within 10 minutes. Are there certain types of feeder fish that are especially good or bad? Do we need to quarantine them before we feed them to Gavin? When we feed him (which we plan to do twice a week), should we keep giving him fish and worms until he stops eating them? Also, are red wiggler worms okay to feed? He ate 12 of them yesterday and seems perfectly fine, but I read a warning against feeding "red stripe bandlings" and I want to be sure that's not the same thing. Any help with any of these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

There is no need to quarentine feeder fish unless you are feeding another fish. The reason for quarentine is to prevent disease and this is not a factor here.

Small shinners are better than goldfish as goldfish can lose scales easily which can "possibly" stick in the garters throat or mouth.

I know of no unsafe worm except possibly tubiflex which are sewer worms. Those are frequently fed to fish and are not that good for them either.

Garters have a high metabolism so feed till there is a nice bulge in the belly but to not feed till the garter stops feeding as they will gorge and barf the excess.

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

I don't know about snakes getting affected by this, but typically feeder fish breeders pump the water up with copper sulfate to control the alge in the tanks, and this builds up in the feeder fish. i know feeding them to other fish will cause them to build up a high level of copper sulfate which can cause a lot of problems, but i dont know if this is a problem in snakes or not. if it is however, quarantining them wont do any good, you actually have to breed them yoruself.
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-Chris

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

A fool doesn't learn. A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Which one are you?

My Website
Rat/Corn snake care sheet I wrote

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat (Lola)
1.0 Black Rat (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds (Jose and Rosa)
0.1 Blue Beauty (Brunhilde)

I breed my guppies in a 10-gallon aquarium, and it's incredibly easy. If you get a couple males and 3-4x as many females, you can breed them rather quickly because they are livebearers. On a side note, if you get really into it fish stores pay well (or trade for fishfood) for really nice guppies, which with selective breeding is actually much simpler than with snakes.

Unfortunately over time the gene pool gets crowded and you end up with some rather "inbred" individuals that have physical problems, but can still be fed to the snakes.

You don't really need any expensive filters or anything... just get a plecostamous and a few corydoras and the tank will be fairly clean. Only thing I've had to do with mine is use a siphon and sweep out the tank gravel every couple months. Raphael catfish, chinese algae eaters, and most suckermouth catfish work well with guppies. I would also suggest a plant or two, such as seagrass (with good lighting) or an amazon sword.

It does tanke a little while to get up to speed, but eventually you get them breeding fast enough you never have to wait for food.

Redworms are a good food choice, but earthworms are also excellent because you don't have to feed the snake as many. Garters are avid eaters and will eat anything you put in their cage, so just find out what works for you.

The garter may eventually need to be fed fuzzie mice... so be prepared.

Good luck
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Current Collection:
0.1 Antherystic elaphe guttata guttata - Corn Snake
1.0 Elaphe vulpina gloydi - Eastern Fox Snake
0.1 Elaphe obsoleta obsoleta - Black Rat Snake
0.1 Leucistic elaphe obsoleta linheimeri - Texas Ratsnake
1.1 Morelia spilota cheyni - Jungle Carpet Python
0.1 Tiliqua scincoides intermedia - Northern Blue Tongue Skink

It's always good to have some live plants on the babies side of the tank so that they can hide. but yeah, breeding guppies is very simple...i used to do it when i kept african ciclids
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-Chris

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

A fool doesn't learn. A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Which one are you?

My Website
Rat/Corn snake care sheet I wrote

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat (Lola)
1.0 Black Rat (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds (Jose and Rosa)
0.1 Blue Beauty (Brunhilde)