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!

Most Garters will take feeder fish and earthworms. The main reasons for not feeding these items are they are lacking in alot of vitamins. If you are going to continue with fish ad a few drops of a liquid multi vitamin into the water that the fish are in. The other problems with feeding fish and earthworms is The Smell The bigger your garter gets the more fish it will need I have 2 females that can go through 3 dozen feeder goldfish in about a half an hour. The poop if not removed immedietley will smell like rotten fish. I would suggest this as a good diet for a baby but as soon as it gets big enough to accept pinkies start to scent some frozen thawed pinkies with earthworms and once you get your snake to take a few pinkies you will no longer have to deal with fish and earthworms smelling up your room