The X- (blog) files, 1 of 1.

As my myriad of faithful followers know, I have set up the now world famous YouTube site “SebastiansAnimals” where I post any clips I think of interest to other animal keepers, however I do have lots of clips that are of poorer quality or may only be of interest to someone reading this blog. 

As I really dislike wading through lots of poor quality or pointless videos on YouTube I will now post this type of clip under the banner SebastiansAnimals, followed by a number and a subtitle, just for you.

This collection of clips are videos I think are interesting or fun but not worth putting on to YouTubes main stream site, and as the titles basically the same on all it wont get picked up when people search and they then dont watch a poor quality video.

I will try and give a full description in the title so you don't have to waste your time too, but please bear with me.

 A new mix of  Kaiser's Spotted Newt Neurergus kaiseri, black banded sunfish Enneacanthus chaetodon and cherry barbs Puntius titteya. (poor quality).

 

        Only just put together and it may not work as the sunfish may be too feisty,                           but what a great mix if it does!

Acrocordus javanicus being force fed, not a great quality video and nothing better than you'll see on the web elsewhere. But this is one of the snakes I mention in the blog, obviously not happy but still alive.

 

My large "community" fish tank.

Housing my red dragon Scleropages formosus, Fly river turtles Carettochelys insculpta and a mix of freshwater tropicals from around the world (but mainly bred in Singapore!)

Although the mix is quite eclectic its a lot more peaceful than a biotope tank housing lots of large cichlids or even a species tank where things are breeding and beating each other up. The only real problem tends to be when new fish go in and the arowana thinks they're dinner or when the Fly rivers decide to scrap which can be quite often, hence their ragged appearance.
Surprisingly the fish it didn't work with was a shoal of giant hatchets Triportheus angulatus. Although one of the fastest fish I've seen they were picked off over a couple of nights. Not a good time at Grant Towers.

Neurergus kaiseri being kept aquatic and fed on bloodworm. Notice how snappy they are, unlike their normal calm behavior when kept terrestrial.

Until the fish were added to their tank I tended to feed them once or twice a week, where as now the fish get offered food most days. Not always food stuffs that the newts would take but definitely four or five times a week it would be frozen or live Daphnia or bloodworm. 
It will be interesting to see if the newts become less aggressive at feeding times if they are not soo hungry, this has been a possible explanation for the aggressive behavior of many reef fishes kept in aquaria, instead of having small amounts of food flowing by almost constantly, the fish get offered large amounts a few times a day. A very unnatural situation for smaller species leading to grumpy fish!
Some places, such as the wonderful Horniman Museum have a drip of food going into their reef tanks to offer the Anthisas sp. the chance to feed all day.

http://www.horniman.ac.uk/

Neoceratodus forsteri and Helicops angulatus

Nothing very exciting happening at Grant Towers at the moment, unless of course you think getting 2 Australian lungfish Neoceratodus forsteri and having 6 Helicops angulatus born is cool?

What can I say? Everyone has their “list” the animals they want to see, work with or keep, mine is long and I've been very lucky to have seen, worked with or kept a lot of them. From Komodo dragons, humming birds and giant tortoises to octopus, ants and giraffes.

Still waiting on a giant salamander but I suppose you can’t just get all your dreams too early, can you?

I remember seeing an Aussie lungfish at ZSL London Zoo Aquarium at least 25 years ago, and have wanted one ever since. Years later, now having a computer and finding out with some surprise that there was more on the Internet than just smut I started a Google search to see if I could get one.

One company had them for sale but not surprisingly they were in Australia and would only sell them in groups of fives. I did offer to pay the freight etc in full but only buy 2 but this wasn’t allowed.

A grumpy frustrated Sebby went back to his old ways on the Internet….

Many years passed and I heard that someone was going to import some so I asked if it was possible to add an extra 2 to the group for myself, imagine my joy when this was agreed!

And soon li’l Sebby and Sebrina made their way to their new home at The Towers.

For such a slow moving fish they do have a very strong reaction if spooked, they are good at taking food from tweezers or fingers if offered slowly but will swim wildly if you move too quickly.

They feed on a large range of foods, i'm offering pelleted foods, shrimp, earthworm and surprisingly peas and cut up fruit, all normally taken well.

The Helicops were not too much of a surprise as id seen what I took to be courtship behavior where the smaller male appears to “stick” to the female. Swimming along beside her with his chin resting against her body, it reminded me of a remora soo much so I caught the male out to see if there was any rougher scales or anything else that may help him keep a hold!

 

 Helicops angulatus courtship behavior, in this clip you can see the male trying to stay with the female. (sorry for the poor quality).

I had found 2 eggs in the water which I was surprised at as I thought they were live bearing. I did try and incubate them but not surprisingly they collapsed very soon after.

The juveniles were separated into a small plastic tank, where they remained mainly aquatic and sloughed a week later.

 Helicops angulatus juveniles one week old.

Obviously more information to come.

Acrochordus

My history with Acrochordus is short and painful, and although even a short internet search will show this species is difficult to keep to say the least, that didn’t stop me jumping at the chance to get some, 3 times…

I have over the last year or so, since I started keeping/killing this species started to write lots of things about what I've done and what I think I should have done. Looking back it seems clear that;

• The animals I've received have not generally been in good condition. 
•  The internet information on this species is poor (or confusing). 
•  I shouldn’t have bought these snakes, or at least the second, or third group. 
•  A fool and his money etc. etc….

The first 2 I received were in poor condition with the fungal infection that seems synonymous with this species, both were thin and had granular marks on their head and bodies.

1) Blisters on the body.

2) Granular marks on the body.

                                                                                                                                            




The jury was out on how they should be kept*, I went for a 75 x 30 cm wide tank with about 10cm of water, heated to 28-30oC, with a small internal filter.

Although it was believed the snakes had probably come from a brackish/marine habitat I was worried about housing them brackish long term due to dehydration. However I thought the fungal infection may be kept at bay by offering salt water. I compromised by alternating the salinity.
Every time I did a water change I changed the SG, sometime making it totally fresh then swinging towards brackish and then on a couple of occasions to nearly full strength sea water.

Substrate was silver sand, bog wood and plastic pipes for hiding in; the snakes have normally favored the sand, burying themselves in the sand, under the wood or a pipe. Although the tank had a mature filter added, due to the changes in salinity I doubt this was functioning properly but as I was doing regular large water change to increase/decrease the salinity I didn’t notice any increase in NH3 or NO2. Basically the filter was there to move the water around a bit and to make me feel better.
There was no lighting except for ambient lighting from the room and the tanks were frequently shaded over at least one end to darken them further.

As these were soo thin I started to tube feed them a mix of Hills a/d diet, Nutrabal (calcium and mineral mix) and glucose, all mixed together in a thin gruel. This was quite easy to begin with but as their strength increased it became more difficult.

They were tube fed every 4 or 5 days for a few weeks then we tried force feeding small fish. These were either pre-killed guppies or mollies or small shop brought frozen fish such as lance fish (probably Ammodytes tobianus.)

These were all pushed quite far into the snakes body to stop them regurgitating but after a couple of months the snakes would normally swallow the food after it had been pushed just past their heads.

Then, one day both snakes started to actively swallow the food as it was placed in their mouths, this continued with the “fussiest” one from then on, while within a week the stronger animal started to feed on live fish placed into its tank.
By then the markings on both of their bodies had started to fade and the snakes looked much better.

3) The darker snakes marks starting to fade.

4) The lighter snake.

At first the water level had to be dropped so the fish would be splashing around if the snake was near, but after another month of this the snake would catch fish easily in the full 10cm deep water.

5) The stronger snake catching live fish.

At this time the weaker snake’s skin started to break out with the fungal infection again. It then developed stomatitis, started to rapidly decline in condition and died soon after.  The other snake was going from strength to strength.

I then saw more A. granulatus for sale from a different supplier and ordered 4; these arrived looking in good condition except for the solid looking crust over each of their heads. These snakes should not have been sold.

6) Granular markings easily visible on their heads

After contacting the supplier and finding out they had been caught in full strength sea water I tried this for a while but within a week 1 had died and within 2 weeks all were dead.

The original snake was doing fine, but then the fungal infection flared up again and it died very soon after. This I believe was caused by cross contamination by me, even though I serviced the new snakes last and tried to keep everything separate. A very frustration time.

May 2012.

I received 4 Acrochordus granulatus and 2 Acrochordus javanicus.

All the snakes appeared very healthy except for one A. granulatus that had stomatitis which had been treated, this wasn’t actually for sale but I bought it as I wanted more snakes and its overall condition appeared good. Due to lack of space I had to house the granulatus together and the 2 javanicus together. My only real concern was being able to tell the snakes apart after feeding.

Housing;

The A. granulatus were kept in the same style as before, while the A. javanicus were initially housed the same but in totally fresh water, then the water level was increased over a few weeks.

Acrochordus granulatus;

First dead snake after 6 days, second on the 7^th day. Both appear to have the granular markings appearing on their heads. I did a large water change with salt water and darkened the sides even more. Both the dead snakes had been very active, the third much less so and the forth very quiet.

On the 7^th day I force fed both of the others, the biggest most active snake appears to be about to slough (reddish tinge to its skin) and regurgitated. The second snake kept it down.

6 weeks later.

The last granulatus died yesterday, it hadn’t fed on its own and hadn’t sloughed either. I think they may need to slough, possibly repeatedly to rid the fungal infection but if not feeding it may lessen their ability to shed?

Possibly a more aggressive feeding regime may help this, the first 2 were force fed quite often and they did shed and survived longer.

The javanicus are still alive and active, one has had a strange looking mark around one eye, it looks a bit like a knock and I’m hoping it will slough it off when it sheds.

7) javanicus with mark around one eye, possibly caused by knocking into something?

(In the article by Lilywhite (Lilywhite 1996) he mentions javanicus caught in sea water getting an opaque cover to their eye lens if kept in freshwater, this condition doesn’t appear to be the same as my animal has and, as its only one snake and one eye I am reluctant to increase the salinity.)

*I couldn’t find a lot of real information on the captive care of this species that I would believe, there is one person who has done very well with them, Dr. Harvey B. Lilywhite who had a paper published in Zoo biology 15: 315-327 (1996). I would recommend if you want to keep this species you read, re-read and then every so often read this again.

A lot of what I have read on them I have found rather difficult to believe. Sites saying they have kept a species for a few weeks or months before they died but then telling us how to keep them. I have kept this species for a few weeks or months and then they died, so if you keep them like I did, yours may too!

I write to say what I’ve done and if it went well, with the file snakes I think my husbandry was possibly OK, but I may have had snakes in poor condition when I got them and my husbandry wasn’t good enough to let them get over this.

The main internet site for this species has recently updated its info and is now much better, however I still have trouble reading it due to its apparent assumptions, poor grammar and, (in my opinion) poor guidelines. And if you read something and notice that some thing's seem wrong, how much will you believe the rest?

As I say in my profile information, the internet has been a massive help in animal husbandry in recent years, but it is this species and the misinformation on it that has made me want to write more than any other.
Seeing pictures or videos you’ve taken on the web is great and a bit of a buzz, but as sites have no peer review it becomes difficult to know who to listen to, especially when they all seem to say they know the most.

There are some interesting videos on YouTube, but there really doesn’t seem the wealth of (honest) info there should be for a difficult animal. Surely people should be posting about how or how not to keep these and not adding another poor quality video that people have to wade through trying to find the good ones?

Come on people, look at your film and think is it really worth people spending their time looking at it when they are trying to learn?

I hope mine are, I have LOTS of footage of my animals or of me doing really cool stuff but it’s really only of interest to me, so I don’t post it. That’s why I have pictures of some of my animals rather than videos, I’d have to upload the videos onto YouTube and then people may watch them when they are just looking for general info. If you’re reading this blog I want you to see what I’m talking about but you don’t have to look at lots of clips that tell you nothing. So I plan, with my YouTube vid’s that when I see better ones I’ll delete mine. OK, rant over (for now).

I was speaking to a very experience veterinarian recently about the granulatus and the trials of keeping them. He asked when it was going to become accepted that perhaps this species isn’t suited to captivity. Although I greatly respect this man and would trust his judgment above most others, I do think this species can and will be kept, BUT it really shouldn’t be an “off the shelf” purchase.

They should be imported only by suppliers who have strong contacts in the snake’s home range who can guarantee what conditions the snake were caught in, salinity, temperature etc. And that the animals were well cared for before shipping. They should have been pre-ordered by experienced hobbyists or zoo professionals who will honestly share their experiences with others.

20 years ago, when I started working in the aquatic retail industry we used to say that Acropora's were impossible to keep but sold Goniopora’s  and Catalaphyllia as an easy to keep corals because they live for months or even years.

Now, Acroporas are sent through the post as frags and although far from easy they are very keep-able.

To sum up my ideas on the granulatus, based on what I have read, seen done by others and by my own experiences.

• Keep them warm; 28-30oC
• Dark, lots of hiding places and subdued lighting.
• Soft sandy substrate, my animals tended to burrow into this rather than hide in the pipes provided.
• Probably feed frequently to begin, especially if the snakes appear weak or have bad fungal growth, this MAY help them slough more frequently and lessen the infection.
• Don’t buy them!

Postscript 01.07.2012;

The A. javanicus are still alive, neither has shown interest in food so have both been force fed twice, which they have kept down.

Pictures 1-4 by Jane Hallam.

Invert update 2 (and other news).

Well the original draft of this started with “Presently all doing well at Grant Towers”…. But, as you’d expect of me, things are going downhill.

 The Acromyrmex octospinosus have got alates again, not sure why this is happening but I’m not sure anyone knows. Maybe once it starts it is an on-going problem?  They only seem to be in the new nest chamber, so I could strip it down and not risk killing the queen, but I will try to be less invasive and offer more fruit and early morning checks to catch them out and about (and then murder them).

“The weavers Oecophila are doing well”, I’d written… But, maybe I shouldn’t write a draft but just post straight away. I had thought they were starting to expand with one large nest and what looks like a smaller satellite nest, but then I found the queen outside the nest surrounded by workers. The next day the same, and then she was wandering around on her own.  Not good.

                                                                              

I have posted a question on the Antstore forum

http://www.antstore.net

So will hopefully get an answer to why this may be.

My Catalaphyllia jardinei is looking a tad ropey the last week or so, it’s in a medium flow area in a heavily fed tank and I’d dropped off the feeding schedule lately.  A classic mistake with many corals when they start to do well, you ignore them, then they crash.

I’ve moved it into a smaller, shallower tank with more light that’s easier to access and will feed it daily so hopefully will see some improvement soon.  I really can’t kill this, it’s one of the corals that seem to do well but aren’t bred, just collected from the wild. BUT, although it’s easy to say you should only buy captive bred, this offers nothing financially to the countries concerned with trying to maintain their reefs. How much can they care about long term solutions when we take their environmental property and make money out of it instead of paying a little more and encouraging proper management of the reef?

If you enter “biopiracy” into a search engine it will come up with lots of things about big pharmaceutical companies taking plants from the rain forest and we all think they’re very naughty, but we rarely mention corals.

(Ok, let’s ignore that the corals and fish are flown over in tiny bags of heavy water…)

On a more positive note

I was also given another Polistes colony. 

                                                                              

These are housed in the same plastic tub but this time with no furniture. This species is doing well in other collections in more basic containers so I will mimic this for now.

The initial move was a pain as I had hoped to copy what I’d seen and stick the nest to the walls with gaffer tape. However the nest didn’t stick to the ropey old tape and it fell off. I then went back to super glue.

I will try not to kill these too quickly… (Maybe the person who gave me them just doesn’t like wasps and knows that I AM pest control……)

Although not invert’s I must mention Neoceratodus forsteri, the Australian lungfish, this species has captivated me since I knew how unique, how hard to come by and how expensive they were*. Stay tuned to hear more. Don’t touch that dial…

*Do you see a pattern emerging?

Helicops angulatus, feeding a group together.

Helicops angulatus, feeding a group together.

At first I thought feeding these snakes together would be a problem, I had thought it may lead to animals not getting enough food, getting bitten or even the smaller animals being eaten.

However I have now tried this a few times and found it very easy. (If you do read any of my posts, you’ll see I’m wrong quite a bit…..)

                  Even the biggest snake which was in slough didn’t attempt to bother the others.                               

In these clips I used a mix of defrosted lance fish (probably Ammodytes tobianus) and defrosted Amblypharyngodon mola, these I purchase from my local Bangladeshi store.*          

                          

I put in a lot of food while keeping some back in case I need to separate animals if aggression arises or to target feed if extra feeding may be needed.

Although the lancefish are marine/brackish I have used them as they are only a small part of the diet and to help bulk up the amount of food offered to help defuse possible aggression. 

*These shops sell a huge range of fish including many fresh water species. Many are wild caught, and all the ones I’ve checked are listed as of least concern on fishbase (http://www.fishbase.org/search.php ) but they do sell lots of Pangasius and Clarias, these will be farmed with all the associated problems this can bring. The fish are also packed in large blocks of water = water miles :(

ANTS!!

I really like ants, there’s soo much variation in them that they appeal to me pretty much like “herps” or “fish”, the more you know the more amazing the diversity becomes.

I’ve kept a few species, some not too successfully including, Pheidologeton diversus,  these didn’t do well (read survive…) as the colony was way too small.

Solenopsis geminata, didn’t do well, I think because of initially a too low temperature so I gave them away to someone with warmer conditions. Polyrhachis australis, I tried my first colony in a mixed tank with Diacamma sp. but kept finding ants dead in a midden, I believe the Diacamma picked them off as they met them. My second colony did well until I moved them into a much bigger area and the started to produce queens and males which I think drained the colony and they faded away…
    
However, I don’t kill everything; a colony of Crematagaster sp.  I received from my ant store did too well. I initially got them hoping they would set up home in a Dischidia pectinoides the species of plant they had been collected in. However they dug under some wood and grew from there. I gave them to someone who had much more space so they could expand. He thinks they have now split into 3 or 4 colonies. 

Acromyrmex octospinosus;

I seem to be having luck with my leaf cutter ants, Acromyrmex octospinosus. These I received from Andrew Stevenson of the company Educational Displays, I have known Andrew for many years and have always had great colonies from him. My current colony I recently gave a new chamber to see if they either moved into it, leaving their old nest or just added it as another chamber. They very quickly started gardening in this one as well, nearly doubling the size of the fungus garden in under a month. They are collecting much more plant matter but producing much less waste, as it’s all going to use.

The only problem I have had with this colony is they have repeatedly gone sexual. A number of times they have started to produce winged queens, which if allowed to stay will drain the resources of the colony by eating the fungus but giving nothing back. I have been told that once this starts that the colony is probably doomed. (We once counted around 100 alates leaving the nest trying to do a nuptial flight).

The advice I received to stop this is to tip the nest into a tub so you can remove the winged queens, however after a while the alates remove their wings and are difficulty to tell from the actual queen. But if placed in a tub the original queen will soon by surrounded and protected by workers while the others will be wandering around, ready to be removed. But as I didn’t have the nerve to do this I pushed bits of fruit (mainly apple or grape) into the openings of the nest so that the alates could easily feed even if they didn’t leave the nest. Then, when, I noticed alates outside the nest I removed them. This is most easily done by turning the lights on suddenly. 

Oecophylla smaragdina

My weaver ants, Oecophylla smaragdina which I received a month ago are doing well, they moved out of the initial nest of 3 or 4 Ficus leaves onto a live Ficus pumilia as soon as the old leaves dried up.

However due to space restrictions I would like the colony to start living in a fake plant. The space I want to keep them in is very long and wide but no higher than around 60cm if it’s a real plant. (This is because the lighting will need too much space.) To see if this will work I added a few bits of the fake plant on top of the nest.

Within a few days they started to attach silk on to the leaves.

I have now added more of the fake plant nearby hoping they will move there permanently as the real plant starts to suffer from their actions.

Looking at posts on ant forums (by ant keepers, not by ants) it seems this should work. We will see…

SebastiansAnimals;
Dodgy videos of my animals on You Tube, a bit of a mix to give you an idea of what I like.

Basically, I like everything!

Sebastian
April 2012

A quick invert update!

As Ive been a bit busy lately I haven't had time to post about a couple of new additions, a small weaver ant Oecophylla smaragdina colony arrived just over a week ago and 3 small paper wasp colonies Polistes dominulus the day after that.

The weavers are from an online store called My ant shop http://www.myantshop.com/ who I have used a few times and can't rate highly enough and you will doubtless be hearing lots more about in the future, while the Polistes came from a friend who was collecting for a project in Spain and gave me 3 small colonies.

The weavers are great, very active and collecting food within minutes of being released, the wasps are dead...

They lasted a week and seemed to be doing well, taking food from tweezers, no obvious aggression and tending 2 out of the 3 nests which were altogether in a large plastic container. But then after five day's I found 2 (out of around 10 animals) dead, the next day all but one were dead on the floor. It 's unlikely to be dramatic temperature fluctuations as the weavers and a Stegodyphus sp. colony in the same area are all fine. 

And although I have not seen any aggression I cant help feeling it may have played a part but if that is so, why so sudden? Perhaps putting the 3 nests together did create tensions, and even though they are probably related colonies the close proximity was just too much?

The person who gave me them has others which are doing well with just an occasional death here and there and has offered me another colony, perhaps I’ll try and work out what I did wrong before I take them though, and then I'll keep them separately....

I have also added another nest chamber to my leaf cutter ant colony Acromyrmex octospinosus, I had been told that they normally stick in one chamber but will move around quite readily, I have added the second partly to help increase the colony size but also to see if they will just get up and move.

And here are some cute pictures of newts to cheer me up.

Tylototriton verrucosus

With thanks to Jane Hallam for taking the verrucosus pictures.

Feeding live food, justified or not?

I have offered live food to many species; mainly invertebrates but sometimes live fish (and in my youth live mice). I do not like doing it, especially with vertebrates but even with the inverts, but I am sure I will have to make the decision again soon.
If you go onto Youtube and type in nearly any predatory species of animal, you will normally find someone, somewhere, feeding something alive, to that species, and very frequently, in my opinion it doesn’t seem justifiable or necessary. The law in the UK doesn’t actually state that its illegal to feed live vertebrate prey (please let me know if this is wrong and we can then try and prosecute the people who feed live mice to their snakeheads!). It does state that its a crime to cause unnecessary suffering, although this can be taken in many ways. Its basically not nice to feed live food if you don't need to (again, in my opinion).
Although some animals have a feeding response that relies on movement (many frogs, preying mantis etc.) many species can easily be weaned onto dead food, if the keeper wants to.

I have kept a few species that have been very difficult to get feeding and have offered live prey to begin with.

The worst species I had that I couldn’t wean onto dead food were Acrochordus granulatus, the banded file snake (please see separate post and photos to come on this species) These were wild caught animals that were in very poor condition and didn’t eat on their own for some time and had to be tube fed, even though offered live food to begin with. The two that I managed to keep alive eventually started to respond to the splashing of small fish in shallow water which seemed to stimulated their feeding response. I did managed to get one of them onto dead food but this was only on a couple of occasions as normally it would only take live fish.

In this case should we say that species shouldn’t be kept? I imagine that some individuals will move onto dead food but how many wouldn’t and how many feeder fish would be fed for this over its lifetime?

I would hope that it's an obvious fact that this species (and others like it) shouldn’t be available “off the shelf” and prospective buyers should be told all the facts about their keeping.

But they are really interesting, very pretty and if I saw them again I would be very tempted, even though I’ve lost a lot of money, a huge amount of time and been racked with guilt on this issue about them.

So the feeder fish dies so the “wanted” fish, snake or frog lives. What about the dead fish that was fed to the easy to keep species; this roach, trout, whitebait or “lance-fish” probably didn’t want to die, may not have died in a good way and, if farmed was probably fed on wild caught marine fish, that died by either suffocated amongst the bodies of other fish in the ships hold or was blast frozen while still alive and then offered in pellet form for optimum growth. (The same sort of thing that people feed their tropical fish tanks when giving flake food).

Basically, (in my opinion,) if you feed your animals any type of animal prey, dead or alive, then the prey animal has suffered to some extent.

If you feed your animal (what ever taxa) live-food (what ever taxa) you should have to at least try to justify it.

There's a species of shrimp, the amazingly beautiful harlequin shrimp that only feeds on starfish. I have seen articles saying to feed them on tropical starfish imported as tank specimens.

In a world where climate change is causing people to die, where air travel is causing seas to rise, is it really worth importing star fish as food for a species that apparently if removed, allow “problem” starfish to proliferate and could be causing coral declines?                                                                                                                                                    
However, animals dying isn’t my main problem, its why and how they die we should be focusing on. Feeding live food may be needed to kick start something feeding or just to keep it alive. I'd rather not feed live insects if I can help it as I don’t like seeing things being torn apart. I write all this because on many of my posts I’ll mention feeding live animals and I hope that this will make it obvious that I don’t feed live food because its easier or because I get a thrill from it. Even the frozen bloodworms we use died being frozen to death, just because I didn’t do it doesn’t let me off the hook. (And yes I do try and avoid eating or using animal products for myself).

There is a very strong argument that if something can't be fed on dead food then it shouldn’t be kept, and although I’d like to argue against this I do have trouble coming up with a point. And I am very good at arguing, and of course, of being a hypocrite.

As I don’t want to go about my personal views on this blog, just to say what I’ve tried to keep and how,  I will now shut up.  

Sebastian                                                                                                                                                    April 2012

Future posts...

Helicops angulatus.

Helicops angulatus.
I hadn't even heard of this species until recently. It's a South American water snake, similar to our Natrix or the North American Nerodia species.
 


The first three I received were in very poor condition, and two died within weeks, even though one had fed. I didn't get any autopsy results from these or faecal results until later. The faecals came back as nothing of interest (This was done as a parasitology test, obviously things could be missed, or of a bacterial nature but I think the main problem was the very poor condition of the snakes and their prior husbandry.)
The third refused dead food for a week, so I brought home a small platy, Xiphophorus maculatus, to try it on.
It obviously noticed it in the water and started to hunt, so I tong fed three small dead defrosted roach, which it took straight away. (I removed the platy.) This snake has fed very well ever since.

The next four I received were in good condition, and three started to feed on dead food within a week.

The fourth was a much quieter snake, staying on a piece of floating bark and not taking any interest in food.

I removed the three feeding snakes to another tank and offered the forth a platy; (can't remember if it was the same one). Once again the snake started to hunt so I tried feeding dead food with tongs. This was successful but only after repeated attempts- involving annoying the snake by knocking the food against its head until it struck. It then held and took a further two small fish straight away.


Husbandry;
I first kept them in a 1 metre tank, mainly aquatic with floating cork bark and some plastic plants both in the water and on the wood.
The water had an internal filter and was heated to around 26oC. Out of each batch of snakes I received, all but one from each group was very aquatic, rarely if ever leaving the water. However the two that did sit on the wood were both the hardest to get feeding.
The tank that I moved the established snakes to had a much larger land area with a small spot lamp for basking. None of the snakes have been seen to bask and if placed on the land return to the water quite quickly.


Sloughing;
This is where Helicops get interesting! When they are going into slough they look like hell!

The largest animal often have a few isolated scales that look damaged (possibly with a fungal infection from being in water all the time?) Their eyes tend to be very cloudy for most of the time they are sloughing, but they rarely seem to stop eating. 

At all stages of sloughing they will normally take food, even if it's obvious they can't see very well. This doesn't seem to be because they are really hungry as my largest snake (the original) will eat until obviously bloated, but still have to be removed days later when I'm trying to feed others because of his aggressive feeding behavior.
The two that seemed to be most unhappy when sloughing have left the water and sat quite dry until just about to shed. The first animal I removed from its tank and placed in a drier tank with a large water bowl which it didn't go into. I sprayed it daily until it sloughed. This animal fed but died soon after.

The second to have this "problem" was in the main tank which has a mister system, I overrode the mister timer a number of times a day to increase the humidity as the skin looked like it could crack, and to allow the snake to drink if it wanted to from water droplets. (It didn't).
Afterwards both snakes seemed fine and ate within a day or so of shedding. But as mentioned, these are the only 2 out of 7 that didn't actively feed even if apparently unable to see.
(Note, the second snake has just sloughed again and did feed while sloughing.)


Compatibility;
I have so far had no problems with keeping different sized snake together. I do make sure I remove the largest snakes when feeding and am ready to separate the others if there are any issues, but even when the largest are put back into the main tank I have had no problems. However, due to the very strong feeding response of this species I would always ere on the side of caution and separate or watch closely.

As I have little space and lots of things I want to keep I often have mixed enclosures, often multi taxa. With the Helicops I have a thriving population of the black chin live-bearers Girardinus metallicus which are too small to be of interest to them. Even if the snakes are actively hunting they seem to ignore even the largest female fish. Of course my snakes are reasonably large and juveniles would of course predate on these fish.


Water quality;
All the tanks I have had these snakes in have had mature biological filters and small water changes. The basic parameters have been based on London tap water; pH around 8. General hardness of around 14.6 DH.
It is very possible that the snakes would benefit from a lower pH, especially as they are soo aquatic. this would lower bacteria levels and possibly lower the incidences of infected looking scales.

I currently keep them in a tank that's fits around my lap top so when I'm working I can see them, and they can see me. There is often one or more with their heads just protruding above water waiting to be fed. 

A top species indeed.