Tentacled snake feeding!

Put 80 mollies in the tank today and here's the result, shown by popular demand.

Pardon the poor camerawork/narration!

http://youtu.be/HkDLWiKa78Q

**Please note that I am NOT a sadist and I would much rather feed frozen or prepared food if I could. Tentacled snakes have a unique, fascinating way of eating that makes this impossible. I post this video to show off the uniqueness of the species, not to revel in how hardcore my snake is killing little fishies.**

That was awesooooome! :D:)

Wow that was really cool. What's the care level on one of those anyways?

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Originally Posted by RaskaNeil

Wow that was really cool. What's the care level on one of those anyways?

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x2

Now I want one......why'd you have to show me??

I want one, too. :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RaskaNeil

Wow that was really cool. What's the care level on one of those anyways?

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Well here's the thing--it can really range, depending on your setup.

They need a consistent non-neutral (most people go acidic but my water is pretty basic here) water which has to be extremely clean. There is a common fungus that wipes out whole colonies, and this helps prevent it. But you could theoretically keep a few of them in a 30g aquarium and they'd be fine.

That being said, I think it might be difficult to maintain them in such a situation due to the bioload of the snakes. I only have two right now as I lost one a few weeks ago that randomly went off feed and started acting weird. (My vet, who has a colony, said this is not uncommon and there's no known cause.)

They're usually kept in larger groups than mine, and often twine together, but can be fine in smaller groups or as individuals too.

In my set-up I have an unusually complicated ecosystem and overboard filtration setup, so the bioload is easily handled, meaning that outside of normal tank maintenance all you have to do is throw safe (non-thiaminase containing) feeders in when the population gets low.

Additionally, they are live birthers, and they do so underwater. They're supposedly very prolific, but I suspect that my two remaining ones are females as I think the one that died may have been a male.

I'm looking to expand my colony again to maybe 5, but the most I've had is 3.

These guys are cool. More info on them can be found in this thread from June:

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...ed-snake-video!

Youtube has some cool videos of these guys which might be posted in that thread.

Nice video. :gj:

Didn't you have 2? I know you had 3 at one point right? Or am I going senile?

Yeah, I've got two of them now. I lucked out that this one was up in the front--it's a pretty large tank with a lot of roots and wood/rocks in it, so you rarely see both at once in there.

The main reason that I want more is so that I'll hopefully always have one in sight, haha.

oh yeah. Having a small "twig bush"(for lack of a better term) of them would be cool. :)