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If you go down a couple of posts, there is a message by "tredding", he states that he had an albino worm snake and a couple normals. Well a deal was made and now all 5 snakes are in my possession.
This snake is the only reported specimen in captivity, is little over 5" long, and is most likely a yearling....
The amelanistic Rough Earth Snake....
Mike
Michael's Place
What if after it sheds, its a normal?
Only kidding. Good Luck with it. What do they eat? Worms?
Dan
Dan,
This is actually one of the smaller snakes that I know very little about and lack experience with. All I know about their diet is that they feed very largely on earthworms, I think they'll also take frogs, slugs and soft bodied insects as well.
Man, the only thing that sucks about this snake, is the fact that I need to keep it in a moist enclosure, look the pics, the dirt totally ruins the colors of the snake. 
Mike
Michael's Place
Mike, I do not know about the dirt thing? I would keep that guy in a well ventilated critter cage or something besides a tupperware and keep the bottom of the cage 1/3 moist moss, 1/3 dirt, 1/3 dry cypress mulch and let him go where he wants as an all dirt cage may lead to blisters if not ventilated sufficiently? Good luck and perhaps do some web searching and perhaps you might discover some research done on the snake which might indicate its feeding preference?
Dan
Hey Dan,
Yeah your idea of a mixed substrate is what I'll probably do, these little snakes can probably dry up very easily. Maybe I'll take a drive over to the local pet stores tomorrow. I'm thinking rubbermaid containers over critter keepers, critter keepers are like $7 to $11 each! Rubbermaid containers are only $1 to $3.
I talked to my buddy Jeff LeClere, he told me the species preys on earthworms and slugs. The females give birth to 2 to 11 young, males are sexually mature at 1 year old and females at 2.
Mike
Michael's Place
I'd splurge on the critter keeper and get some of that bed-beast or eco-earth. They sound similar to my sharp-tail in terms of moisture requirements. I keep a slab of bark in the cage and keep the substrate moist under it, but let it dry in the rest of the cage. This gives him a choice. I also try to replace the substrate at least bi-monthly (more often if I notice any odor). I think that the ventalation provided by a screen to is very important.
I'm actually using a 1.5 gallon (I think) glasss tank with a sliding screen top, in addition to the pin keeping the screen shut, I have a clamp at the other end, to keep the lid from leaving any gaps. My guy is pretty small and I was afraid of him squeezing through the holes in the critter keeper (I lost a ring-neck once this way).
As far as cost, your albino is irreplacable. Compared to that, what's the cost of a well ventalated cage?
Oh, if your crafty, you could still go with a rubbermaid, cut out a large portion of the lid, and glue in some screen. This would probably work just as well as the aforementioned options at a fraction of the cost.
-Alice
Someone once posted about getting something, I think it was called cocca life at a nursury. Because it's made for plants, sea water is not used to manufacture it, so, it would probably be better for the worms. I really like the compressed cocconut fiber substrates because they retain moisture well and don't tend to break down and fungus. They also hold burrow structure really well. I've had problems with skin infections in the past when I used things like dirt and litter collected from outside.
Shallow, small clay plant saucers also make great water dishes for this type of set up. They have to be refilled frequently because they are somewhat porus, but this helps maintain substrate moisture.
This is sure to be an exciting project!
Alice
Well, I knew I did not communicate it well, but perhaps have soil in one area, dry mulch in another area, and wet moss in another area, vice mixing it all together in a slop, this way the little guy can do where it wants and bask on the dry stuff if ne needs to? And yea, get a good cage with no freking holes he can sneek out of. If you loose that snake though an escape, you need to resign as a snake keeper. And if you get lucky you might breed the sucker and have a bunch of albinos on the market in 4 or 6 years. I assume that like ringnecks and other small snakes and will go into a breeding frenzy this spring with the others, so put them all together in a good cage like a 10 gallon with a good day night ligt cycle and once april gets here, they should get into it. I hope the baby albino replace the ball python as the most popular pet. Do they lay eggs? I hope not. That has got to be a tiny egg to hatch. Good luck
Thankfully, they are live bearers, unthankfully, the neonates are as small as brown snake newborns. Which is why putting them all together for the "breeding frenzy" is never going to happen with the albino. I do not feel like wasting time raising up babies if they do not carry the amel gene. So, this year, I'm going to breed the normals, I paired them off today, hopefully I got them actually paired up 1.1 lol, I did not want to go through the troubles of probing such small snakes as of yet. The amel is only about 5", and needs to be 6" to be sexually mature, so needless to say he will not be breeding until 2006 or mid 2005, depending on how much food he will actually want to take on.
I didn't get him into a new enclosure yet, I'll probably have him set up within the next week or so. Last night the little guy was almost gone for good, lol, he jumped out of his tank and went right for a tank holding 2 common snappers, which will jump at anything that touches the surface of the water, without hesitating. Lucky me, he missed their tank and just landed on the shelf. 
I tried feeding today, with all of them, worms and slugs, no takers but the albino seemed pretty interested in the worms. Oh well, nothing went to waste, my ringnecks and snappers cleaned those right up. YUM.
Mike
Michael's Place
Mike, I think those small snakes live in colonies for the purposes of breeding and brumation. Hence, you might have to throw them all together just to get the scent of mating in the air. Some wild caught snakes are difficult to breed. Since we know perhaps nothing about this one, it is not easy to guess what turns it, scent or temp or light? However, no matter the time of year, you put in 10 tropical snakes of the same species and wait several minutes, breeding often happens for some unknown reason even with wild caught species. I know ringnecks all hit the roads and can be found in abundance with each other in the spring, perhaps for breeding purposes. Hence, if you get no reaction from a pair, then you may have to put them all together at once at a later date? Just keep it in mind. I assume that albino is a male. Oh well, that makes it more difficult to see if you have to resort to that.
Your snappers almost ate that albino? That would have been a story you perhaps would keep to yourself if it happened. We can get past that it escaped and is got out of your house, but not in the tummy of a snapper. Well, if it had been eaten, you could walk away from the snake hobby and started selling turtles. When I was a kid I lost my pet mouse to my owl that way by turning my back for a second. All I saw was grab and swallow and a tail hanging out of its beak. Oh well, it was easy to replace the mouse than an albino earth snake.
lol, isn't that true. I'd say for every, what, 20 million mice there is 1 albino earth snake lol.
Yeah, to save time, energy, and breeding efforts, I'm going to put the 4 normals together in a small plastic aquarium, offer them worms and slugs weekly, and then split them up in July and house them seperately. I do not want to hurt the little snakes by sexing them, so if the females are gravid, they'll have babies, and then I'll put the adult females in with the albino in the following spring and hope for the same amount of luck for some hets.
If I recall, there was a guy on this forum, his username was "Cubsfan" and then there were maybe 5 numbers after that, we used to talk frequently last year. He had a colony of rough earth snakes, something around 10 to 15, which he had all together in a 10 gallon tank. Once a week, he put a small cup in one corner filled with about 20 worms, and the snakes would come to the cup and eat. He practicly trained the little snakes to get on a feeding schedule, awesome. He also had a light colored one, lighter than any of the other ones he ever saw, which he described to me as a hypo.
Mike
Michael's Place
Yea, I had a colony of southerns and threw in the worms and the snakes often started on each end of the worm and would have eaten the next guy if I did not watch closely. If that albino gets eaten, have a knife standing by to cut it out. Just kidding
The eating habits of the southern and regal are so different that it is hard to believe they are the same type of snake.
Dan
Hi Michael,
Congratulation to the proud owner of the rarest albino worm snake. Hope you will successfully breeding more albino worm snakes and I am sure there is big demand out there which means big money to follow you. So please take good care of the lovely albino worm snake because I don't think you will ever see the albino worm snake twice in the wild. Have fun.
Best Regards
SnakeSense
Thanks for the praises dude..
But just to correct you...it's a Rough Earth Snake. I can't remember if I mentioned that in the post or not.
Mike
Michael's Place
I noticed it was not a worm snake when I first saw it in your pictures because there is a difference in the size of their head as well as the neck. But the subject title of "Tredding" post kept coming up to my mind and that's how the mistake happen. Anyway your albino rough earth snake is a very pretty little snake that everybody want to own.
Vincent
" I don't think you will ever see the albino worm snake twice in the wild."
Well, not now!!!
HA!
:Mark
It'll be really cool if you can get it established and breeding!
-Alice
lol nice... how much am i gonna have to pay for het or pure albino animals? they look like cool snakes and good luck with them
Demon
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