For quite a long time i had read kelly's views on keeping anacondas without soaking pools and completely disagreed with him.I have been to the pantanal in brasil and the llanos in venezuela and i can tell you both greens and yellows are almost completely aquatic.Anacondas spend far less time out of water than caimans do but you would never hear anyone suggest keeping a caiman without a soaking pool would you? However, i now believe kelly to be absolutely right and would advise any would be anaconda keepers to maintain them without soaking pools unless they can provide zoo type water facilities.I have had a number of large anacondas die recently,all of these snakes were perpetual soakers.following autopsy all these snakes were found to be suffering from mycobacterium infection. This is a particulary nasty bacteria for which there is no effective treatment and it is always closely tied to bodies of water. When greens are small it is very easy to maintain water bowls hygenically however as they become larger it becomes much more of an issue and believe me dragging a 130lb snake out of a water container full of faeces and urine is not much fun and really impractical.Now i keep all my greens as kelly does and they do fine like this and infact they tend to feed better. Humidity does not seem to be a problem either,they do fine in the 45-60% range. Obviously if you can provide a large temperature controlled pool with a filter for your snake that would be fantastic, but how many people can actually do that at home?

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