General care requirements

Hello,

I am new to this forum, and I am excited to see that so many people are having success with Tropidolaemus. I kept T. wagleri and T. subannulatus several years ago. I currently do not keep any, but I was thinking about working with this genus again. I had limited success with them, and only had my snakes survive for about 3 years. They did very well during those first few years, then feeding became more sporadic, then some regurgitated food and died. I suspect that the ambient cage humidity was too low, but I am not sure if other factors were at work as well. I have been very successful at keeping and breeding Cryptelytrops, Popeia, Bothriechis, and Atheris, so Tropidolaemus has been a challenge!

Since there seem to be several experts on the care of Tropidolaemus in this forum, I was hoping that some of you would share your experiences. I read in some of the other posts that there are a few rules to follow when keeping these snakes.

Please provide whatever information you can. Here are a few specific questions that I would like to find answers to, but any other important or “secret” tips are greatly appreciated!

• What temperatures are ideal for Tropidolaemus (including day, night, and seasonal temperatures)?

• Do they need a basking site with a higher temperature?

• What types of food and how often do you feed?

• Do most people use automatic misting systems to keep cage humidity high?

• Are there any tips for breeding?

• Anything else important that I didn't ask???

Thanks,
Mike

I am also interested in the same information!


regards
-arcy

http://www.thomas-jaekel.homepage.t-online.de/index-wa.htm Try this sight for some help guys.


TJS

Mike Torocco wrote:

Hello,

I am new to this forum, and I am excited to see that so many people are having success with Tropidolaemus. I kept T. wagleri and T. subannulatus several years ago. I currently do not keep any, but I was thinking about working with this genus again. I had limited success with them, and only had my snakes survive for about 3 years. They did very well during those first few years, then feeding became more sporadic, then some regurgitated food and died. I suspect that the ambient cage humidity was too low, but I am not sure if other factors were at work as well. I have been very successful at keeping and breeding Cryptelytrops, Popeia, Bothriechis, and Atheris, so Tropidolaemus has been a challenge!

Since there seem to be several experts on the care of Tropidolaemus in this forum, I was hoping that some of you would share your experiences. I read in some of the other posts that there are a few rules to follow when keeping these snakes.

Please provide whatever information you can. Here are a few specific questions that I would like to find answers to, but any other important or “secret” tips are greatly appreciated!

well mike, Tropidolaemus seems to be a challenge for many people at all...

it has been published so many on this animals, and as have been published lost´s of crap... i fact, i have read so many crap, that i am not surprised about the many unsuccessful stories i hear... some authors writhing about the species, even they never have taken care of some or they where not successful at all..

one, well known german author has published an article about Tropidolaemus, he stated that all animals are killed by hobbyists and that this particular species should not been kept in captivity at all, not even by experts! one year later, the same "expert" published a book about successful keeping and breeding of Tropidolaemus...., well i think you get my point...

i understand, there has been so much trouble with keeping them alive in the past... i am certain, it is mostly because of bad condition, WC animals arrive before you get your hands on.. WC animals are terrible dehydrated - i will not start again to explain the horrible practices of the collectors in their natural habitats - but let me tell you so much, Tropidolaemus need to be kept, following some simple rules... if you do so, the species is hard and long living, without having any problems at all.

• What temperatures are ideal for Tropidolaemus (including day, night, and seasonal temperatures)?

the Temperature is varying also in their natural habitats, but the general rule is, dont keep them to warm! the maximal temperature should not exceed more than 24°C (75 F), daytime 24-to 26°C with a slight dropping temperature down to 20° - 22°C at night is, following my experiences with them, perfect.

• Do they need a basking site with a higher temperature?

no, they dont! but if you keep them in bigger enclosures with an natural set-up you can provide them with an spotlight, but not more than 28°C underneath!

• What types of food and how often do you feed?

the biggest issue in their husbandry is clearly food related. Tropidolaemus will usually take anything they can swallow (if the animal is not ill), but, they seem to have big problems, digesting fur... so, stick with feeding them pinky rats and they will do just fine! regurgitating is observed here always after having a "hairy meal", it looks almost like the hair-balls you find from owls.. they have to spit the fur out, as most of the individuals have trouble digesting them...

in their natural habitats, you find this animals always close to rivers, mostly hanging on branches over the smaller streams, awaiting frogs, lizards, even birds..
amphibians is their main food items, our research shows clearly, more than 90% (N100+) of their stomach-contents are frogs...

biggest problems in captivity causes over feeding the animals while feeding rodents... if you do feed rats or mice, they take it well, but you should not feed more than one good sized food item every 3 months or so... if your animals are feed on frogs, you can hand them up to one frog of propper size every other week, as amphibians are easier to digest..

• Do most people use automatic misting systems to keep cage humidity high?

some folks do it, i think, it is not necessary if you spray them 2 times a week, and keep the relative humidity above 60% at all times! short drops down to 50% will be accepted with no signs of discomfort... peoples always ask me, if it is necessary to keep the RH above 80% at all times. i dont think so, coz the humidity drops also in their natural habitats below 60% RH... in fact, the average Humidity is about 70% at daytime, and 85% at night.. try to keep it this way, and you will have no problems... to high or to low, or stable 100% will cause respiration tract infections and kill the animals...

• Are there any tips for breeding?

many, but it should be taken care of stabilizing the animals first.... there are many problems to been taken care of before you even can consider breeding them... the biggest issue is, most folks dont even know the sexual differences, what is a male and what is a female is not always easy to say... probing doesnt work well because of their arboreal tails. another problem is clearly, many animals i have seen in captivity are just mixed up... the place of origin is simply wrong coz the exporters does not know the exact place themselves. our research shows clearly, in the future we will have to deal with 10+ Tropidolaemus species... sometimes, you find two or even 3 species in the same area... i think, many folks keeping just different species together and awaiting breeding results who might never will take place... the systematic of the genus is pretty much complicated and will take another year, even longer to get a clear picture...

• Anything else important that I didn't ask???

water mike is the key!!!! i cant say it often enough, Tropidolaemus are heavy drinkers, especially if you feed rodents... they need a special treat to drink prosper... they will not just drink from water-bowls (few exemptions have been observed)... misting is simply not enough to make this special animals to drink... you need to keep dropping water constantly, sometimes for a whole minute on to their heads before they even wake up and start drinking by themselves.. you would be very surprised how much they drink then... the seem not to stop... if your animals will not drink enough, they will finally die, mostly because of irreparable liver damage...


so in short, do not keep them to warm, try to level the relative humidity between 60-75%, have a good ventilated cage, feed if possible food items without fur, make them drink enough...


if you follow this simple rules, you will have no problem what so ever in giving this beautiful animals a long lasting life...



hope it helps a little

Thanks for enlighting us Mario. All the info you gave confirms some of my own toughts about some of the things (inc. humidity and feeding).

Usually with all my snakes I try check the local weather (if I know the locality) and try to manipulate it as best as I can.
My pair of wagleri's comes from Narathiwat and the quick check about the temps last year when I got the snakes was 21-34'c (min-max) debending on the season. So I have kept them around 30'c at day and the night temps drop around 20'c... So I think I'm going to drop the temps a little just to be sure.

Thanks again.

Sami

To pick up the food problem about Mario has written ->

Males are easily to feed because it is easy to get rodents without fur in the correct size.
But for my females I have some ugly guys at home - I breed rats without fur. They look creepy but it works perfect.
And so I have the right food in every size.

I'll have to try the hairless she if she'll eat them. Thanks for the info. JORG.

Thanks
TJS

Maybe I should say - they´re not easy to breed as normal rats.
• You should know that you can´t keep them as cold as normal rats
• The diet should be high energy rat breeding pellets and some "dog pellets", because of the needed proteins
• They take more time to start breeding than normal rats (Don´t give up to early)

But if you know this rules it works fine and the results are cool --> rodent food easily up to 300gr without annoying fur

I heard about mices with the same gen damage, but I have never seen some offered.
Maybe you´ll find interesting material about this at -- > http://www.criver.com/en-US/ProdServ/ByType/ResModOver/ResMod/Pages/CD-1NudeMouse.aspx
I found this company because I have seen the logo of this company on a mice box of a food dealer at a snake show. And Dr. google made it possible to find it.

Maybe I'll just have to break out the electric shaver and start shaving the mice see how that works!

Nice piece mario. Finding reliable info is always been a problem. when I started keeping snakes in the 1970s there were very few books and no internet.
One trick I have tried is to skin the mice, they still eat them fine except for one Sumatran female I have. I have noticed that if I feed mice with fur to this Sumatran females give them a good drink and keep the day temp to 28 deg they don't bring back fur? any ideas? she is the one I posted a picture of a couple of days ago. she is 8 years old now and doing fine.
Another trick i do is to spray them with water and then offer them a water bowl under their nose and they all seem to drink ok. I suppose it is easy for me as we only have 12 Waglersif you have big colections of them like some of you guys then you would be there a lifetime.
I am celebrating today, all last years baby eyelash vipers ate on their own last night also it looks like one of the speckled rattlers is gravid. I know they are not venomous but its looking good for baby olive pythons and golden white lipped pythons. I have a female golden WLP which is over 3 meters long, and it is mean.

Love the White Lipped Pythons, I also keep these, they breed every year.

Dave

yeh they are great, the one in the picture is evil, she never backs down and will go out of her way to get you. she bites rats in half and is 3 meters of attitude but you've got to love them

Paul Nelis wrote:

Another trick i do is to spray them with water and then offer them a water bowl under their nose and they all seem to drink ok. I suppose it is easy for me as we only have 12 Waglersif you have big colections of them like some of you guys then you would be there a lifetime.

All my arboreal vipers are trained to drink from my spray gun. That is the only way to controll that they really drink. My Sulawesi female hasn´t left her brunch for over one year. She even droped her babies from this place. As I moved her cage from one room to another, I took the brunch out of the cage and she didn´t make any efforts to leave the brunch. Sometimes I believe she will die of thirst because of lazyness if I don´t give her water from the spray gun.

Yes all the other aboreal vipers like the trigonocephalus, popeiorum, schlegeli etc manage with the spray gun. we have 3 sulawesi females here and they are the same as yours movement is an annual event. but for some reason the sumatran females drink from bowls?

sorry about the quality of the photo, its a still from a video.

One of my thoughts was that I fixe a bowl on her favourite brunch.
But I don´t have an idea to do this right.
Maybe I took a bigger nut shell and paint it with epoxid to make it water resistent and after that I could fix it with a screw.

I affixed something similiar using an epoxy resin in a coconut shell. Worked great. I screwed it in the joint where her two favorite branches meet at the top. She coils around it for stability and a view point.

hi i'm keeping waglers(sub.) since one year and half so i'm a beginner, my waglers doing well after this time i have 0.1 sulawesi pregnant and 1.2 mating this month
mario has enlighted the right thing

-relatively low temperatures i've keep mine during this cold winter here in france at 24-25days /21 night my waglers doing very well, my waglers dont have any heating system the room temperature is sufficient

-water is the point, i didn't make automatic misting system because if the terrarium its not correctlly made, misting can be dangerous. moist kill wagler! to avoid this problem i give them hand drinking with washing bottle each week or two week i give them water until they have enough(about 20min to 1hour each...). if you have hexarmor glove it's better.
mine don't drink from water bowl even in branches...but i tried aquaterrarium set up for my first kalimantan and it works well keeping water hot it's too energy consuming so i've switched to dry set-up with manual drinking.

using washing bottle my waglers dont have any défécation problems even with hairy animals, but i think it's not a rule and mario is right about furless rodent it may avoid a lot of problems.

about breeding! once you keep your waglers healthy every cold front can be a mating season, if you keep the male separately for a long period it may hunt for the female immediatly...hungry for sex.

my experience is very short so maybe my set-up will show weakness in the future.
regards to all

Mario, I have some question regarding diet.

You mentioned earlier that frogs make up 90% of their diet... so if I it was easier for me to obtain frogs than it is for me to obtain rats/mice... can I feed males on a consistent diet of frogs?

Will females need frogs of larger sizes?
My female is currently fed on mice, and with my concerns for over feeding I usually wait for her body to tone down a bit before I feed her again. Will eating mice consistent cause intestinal impaction from the accumulation of undigested fur? And if I switch her diet, how often should I feed her?

Cheers and best regards

Mr Mario thank you very very much for this invaluable informations, for years I´ve trying to get some Tropidolaemus, but always afraid to get bad luck with them, now with this info hope to be succesfull in their keeping and breeding because they will be a great specimens to the reptile zoo.

thaks again.

pd, hope some of you guys keep updating and posting your advices and experiences in the forum for a better knowledge of all species.

regads

Hello my friends,
Do you know at what age is sexually mature a male or a female of Tropidolaemus wagleri? I suspect there is a difference between the sexes.
Best regards