Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am new to crocodillians and I recently resuced a baby american alligator from a friends little brother about 3 months ago, who, like alot of pet owners, bought him on a whim. After a month he no longer could really care for it and had to give it up, so I took on the responsibility and haven't looked back, I really love the opporunity to care for such an exotic creature, and look forward to years of enjoyment, both good and bad, with this creature. I have had a decent amount of experience with all sorts of pets, but this is by far the biggest jump of them all, no matter how you look at it.

His name is Sauron, and he is about 13.5 inches in total length, tip of snout to tip of tail, and a SV length of 7.8 inches. He lives by himelf in a 55 gallon tank filtered by a Rena XP3 Canister filter. He eats one fuzzy mouse every 3 days, has Rosy Barbs in his tank at all times, and gets crickets as an occasional treat.
I replaced the dock in this pic with a LARGE turtle basking dock from ZooMed, so he has a much bigger place to rest now. I hope this 55 will last the year, after that I am going to construct a larger enclosure from scratch about 70" X 70" with a 300 gallon rubbermaid stock pond built in, and with this enclousre I hope to get another 3-4 years out of before I build his final enclosure, something along the lines of a 2-car garage-sized shed.

I hope to order Chris Deiters book within the next few months, as I have heard this is the bible of crocs next to the captive care resource at crocodillian.com.

Any comments on his encloure and diet are greatly appreciated, I tried to do as much research as I could before I aquired him, but I am always looking out for ways to improve his captive life.

Here is a link to a fish hobbyist site I frequent often with a detailed "diary" of Sauron, along with alot of other pics!

www.oscarfish.com/1-vt42337.html?postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

to the crocodilian forum. Sounds like you truly mean well for this animal and that is awesome to hear. If you need any help, there is a wealth of knowledge in this forum. Hope to see more from you.

Thanks Gioni. I have been on browsing this forum since the day I picked him up, just haven't registered till now.

Is the feeder mice-one every three days (feed monday, skip tuesday, skip wednesday, feed thursday, etc.) pushing it or just right? Like I said he has a large supply of rosy barbs in with him, and at least a cricket or 2 a night, but should I be feeding mice more and fish/crickets less, I mean in a year he will only be eating what I can give him, since these tiny fish and insects won't be anything to him then.

In Theory is the 3-day feeding good for the long term, once he is 6 foot long, is eating one large rabbit/chicken/quail/rat/etc every 3 days enough, too much, not enough?

Another of my fave. pics of him!

and yes the 3 times a week feeding is fine. What type of fish are you feeding? Hopefully not goldfish or those feeder fish. If you are then stop, because they aren't good for them. crickets are fine but I would lightly dust them in a vitamin supplement. I personally use minerall, but Chris Dieter made mention of just using a human multivitamin. However, that will be alittle harder with yoiur little guy. Wait until he gets around 3 feet to try that (due to prey item sizes).

Thanks, he's very camera friendly, although he is very skittish and aggressive still, but he's a baby in a new enviroment, I don't blame him, not to mention he is an ALLIGATOR!

lol

The feeders ahh yes, the guy i got it from had him on a diet of about 20 feeder goldfish a week, I knew this was very bad, and the first thing i did was get rid of all the goldfish, I replaced them with Rosy Barbs, which are sold as feeders at my LFS, but from what I researched, Barbs are the best fish to feed a gator, but I do not know where I read that, maybe the Captive Care FAQ. They are relativlty small fish, the biggest about 2 inches, about as thick as a #2 pencil.

He doesn't really seem to eat them alot though, I have had about 3 dozen in there for a month now, only 1 dozen missing, I just felt that he should have something to snack on when he is alone, plus something to keep him "hunting".

Thoughts?

www.fishpondinfo.com/rosies.jpg

Crappy pic of what they look like, as for scale I'd say this guy is about an inch long.

In all reality I am done with the rosies anyway, I mean they aren't much for him now as it is, and in general is probably not needed. And as for the crickets I feed them that Gut Load calcium food and Cricket Drink with calcium. Is that ok or not a good idea for gators?

well as for the gut load stuff, I am really not sure. Typically in the wild gators dont eat alot of any crickets. The ones that are eaten certainly are loaded with all that stuff. I primarily would say that a multivitamin supplement just dusted on the crickets would be the better bet. Perhaps others in here might have some other opinions on that subject.

I gotta say too gioni, your gators are great looking too, about how big are they now?

Thanks. Both of them are about 3 ft. One of them is just really squirmy and the other is meaner than snot. I love em both though.

Thanks for the compliment.
chris

Ha, your Chris too, thats funny.

Yeah mine is pretty squirmy as well, and man if I am ever "above" him (being that he is in a fish tank) he used to swim quickly to hide, but last night he started jumping out of the water snapping at me, scared the crap out of me!

I was in the process of thawing out his dinner with some tank water, I think he knew he was being fed, just didnt know where the food was. I used to hand feed him, dangling the mouse from his tail directly over my gator while he was in the water. I realized after awhile this had to change, so I started putting live fuzzys onto his basking dock and he plucks them off there quick. Now he does the same for frozen mice so I think we're good on the current feeding structure. I was afriad a have frozen dead mouse would not be very appealing to him, but he took it just as fast.

chris,

Yeah typically they dont pay much attention to it. If it looks edible, they go for it. I have fed mine F/T small rats quite frequently and they love it.

Chris

kudos to you for wanting to take proper care of this little guy. Sounds like you are trying to go about it in all the right ways and that makes me very happy. please keep us posted about his progress so that those of us who are stuck in a 3rd floor one bedroom apartment can live vicariously through you and your new friend. Keep up the good work.

I feel for ya man, I am still an apt dweller, but I am a first floor basment dweller, haha, will be relocating soon and finally be in the market for my first REAL house, woo hoo!

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement, being that he was born into the pet trade, I hope this lil guy will be as happy as he can be.

I plan on eventually starting up an online Diary of Saruon, something hosted, not just a thread on a forum, so when that happens I will post the URL and then will be able to show off all aspects of his life.

Take care!