Tentacle Snakes...

Here are some pics of the basic setup... Its nothing fancy.... not yet... and it wont be really. The whole purpose is to keep the setup as simple as possible, for maintencing reasons.All I have in the tanks... bare bottom, malayasia drift wood, assorted water plants, spahgnum peat moss (wrapped in a filter bag), a submerisble heater, and a simple submerisble small fluval. I've kept the LTC as a group for roughly 6 months... havent had a problem yet... (i have yet to have any algae growth on them, dont know why?). I dont offer any land areas... the only place they can somewhat lay out on... is on the subermisble heater.... water temp ranges from 80-82 during the day... and goes down to 78 at night... I try to keep the air temp roughly the same. I have been told that alot of tentacle snakes die due to a thaimine defecenciy (not a good speller), soo I've gutloaded all my feeder fish a week in advance before I offer them to the snakes (I use Tetra's Spirulina). I havent had any issue with keeping them in groups... well not with the LTC, the new arrivals... have all been kept seperate, but they will be paired up eventually. I dont know if anyone has noticed when getting a group but if you purchase lets say 8 animals... you tend to get a 50/50 male to female ratio. There easy to sex visually... (i'll post photos of that soon), there boring.... dont get me wrong... there not exciting.... but there interesting. They way they hunt... the way the move... and feel, its just different. I'm currently moving to a new apt. And with the move will come more room for a better more eye pleasing rack system for them. I'm currently working with these and some atheris hispidas.... for now... Again there uncommon, but my whole goal is to breed these odd snakes... if you have any questions feel free to email me...

P.S. does anyone know of a good quality affordable camera I can use, to take nice decent pics of my animals??? (old camera sucks..., new camera is too advanced)

R.G.

davo;1275581; said:

Nice set up. Do you ever spot them up out the water on the heater? What feeders do you use? That would be a problem over here, we don't really have feeders...
Also how long are they, and do they have at least a height of water equal to their body length? Have you tried pre killed food at all with them?

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I have spotted one of the males... somewhat resting on the heater.... but not much. Right now I'm using rosy reds...., but it has been suggested to feed them minnows/mud minnows from bait shops (i'm assuming cause they have all the natural nutrition), the biggest females are roughly 20inches... the males are around 18 or so...I didnt feel up the tub all the way.... I felt it would be easier for them to breathe. I have not tried pre killed, I've held live fish between my fingers and slowly tap them in the face with it.... after lets say 3minutes or so of trying... it finally snapped... bit missed...and I figured the hell with trying to feed it.

elevatethis;1275878; said:

Very interesting. I've heard that another failing point for these guys is that they can get skin blisters if they aren't kept in brackish water. Then, to make things worse, the snakes can become dehydrated when kept in brackish water. Appearantly, in the wild they drink fresh rainwater that falls and gathers on the surface in their brackish habitat. How the heck do you simulate that in captivity?

Good luck with these guys. I thought about setting up a tank with them, but decided against when I started to research them. I'd be able to do it, I think, if that's all I had on my plate as far as reptiles goes...but thats not the case right now.

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Skin blisters none soo far..., they get a 25% water change weekly.... brackish water I havent heard of that... i've heard of acidic water. They doo need, so thats why we have the peat moss in there and the drift wood, to bring down the ph.

Availablity right now is low.... you wont really find these anywhere, well not on kingsnake much... there are few places....

strictlys reptiles
us global

mostly the importers... where the ones who carried them...



that get them in every soo often. But just keep a look out... they dont come up often as before.