first shed...

[nessy]

@ snaky: there's no small fish here in good old england, the only common one are sticklebacks, dont know if you can feed the snake them with their spikes

@ abcat1993: oh, okay, sorry about that. erm, i'm not quite sure how to do it though... can you tell me? (sorry i'm such a newbie)


sorry, haha, i never saw the editing button. is that what you meant stefan? that its only there for 30 mins, cos i've never seen it before now. sorry guys, i wont do it again

[abcat1993]

I don't really know either, see, I'm a noob too

[Stefan-A]

Editing is allowed for 30 minutes after you first posted. The button does disappear after that.

After that you have to make a new post if you have anything to add.

[Stefan-A]

nessy, about 1/5 of the fish I catch when I'm catching bleak (using a net), are yearling roach (Rutilus rutilus). Those should exist in Britain too, although they also contain thiaminase. And then there is the Eurasian minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus).

Edit: And stupid as I am, I just made a new post despite just having explained how editing works. abcat, this is the kind of situation where one would use that banana.

[Cazador]

Hey Nessy,
We have a ton of stickleback here in Alaska, too. I've considered feeding them to my snakes but decided not to. They are almost always heavily parasitized. You can usually find a white, fluke-like parasite called schistocephalus sp. in their abdomens simply by squeezing it out their cloaca. You'll notice many populations of stickleback with small, black spots on them. Those are another kind of parasite, but I don't remember it's name at the moment. Another common parasite forms pustules. Some inhabit the eye. The list is nearly endless. I spoke with parasitologists from England and Norway last fall (early August) who use the threespine stickleback as a model organism on which to study parasites, so the infestation of this species complex is extremely widespread.
Rick

Here's a link to a National Academy of Sciences report that says which fish contain or lack thiaminase. Unfortunately, stickleback were not analyzed. Notice that the table is two pages long. The top part lists fish with thiaminase, and the bottom part (and second page) lists those without.

Nutrient Requirements of Mink and Foxes,

[abcat1993]

Originally Posted by Stefan-A

abcat, this is the kind of situation where one would use that banana.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Please NO

[Snaky]

@abcat, nessy:
Thiaminase is an enzyme that will tackle vitamine B1. This does not mean that in nature gartes won't eat those fish, they just eat enough diversity to get the vitamine B1. So it's not a problem to give them fish that contains thiaminase if you supplement it with vitamine B1, which I get for free (powder form) at the local pharmacy.

edit:
You can also kill the thiaminase by heating the fish to ( I think ) 80 °C.

And the list of fish that contain thiaminase and those who don't is handy.

[Cazador]

Hans,
It really is a dangerous game to play if you're primarily feeding fish that contain the thiaminase enzyme since one enzyme molecule can process tens of thousands (maybe more) substrate molecules during its "lifetime." You're exactly right about it being a matter of density between the enzyme and substrate concentrations, but since you can't easily see the effects until it's too late, it's hard to know if you're giving too much or too little thiamine supplement.

The effects of feeding a diet of only goldfish without B1 supplementation, for example, may take 6 months or longer to appear. Then, they could easily be mistaken for general illness or stress. Low level thiamine deficiencies may only result in decreased growth rate or reproductive failure, rather than weakness or death, but who wants either of those to happen? There are so many other choices of nutritious fish out there, that I think the risks involved outweigh the need to feed fish that contain thiaminase.

[Stefan-A]

None of the species I use are actually on it and oddly enough, species from the same genus are on both lists, so there's obviously no point in even assuming that closely related species share that trait. It's of limited use to me, unfortunately.

If I ever get the chance to study thiamniase in Baltic fish species, I will. Could be an idea for a future thesis, if I'm lucky.

[Snaky]

@cazador:
I always give a variaty of food. But what I wanted to say was: "I don't hesitate to give also fish with thiaminase. They catch the fish in the wild also and I supplement the fish with B1."

Also to much thiamine (or vitamine B1 for those that don't know) is quite difficult to give. B1 is a vitamine that is solvable in water, so to much is just given out in the urine. For a human for example you need to eat it practically by the kilo (figurely speaking) before you'll have to much B1, the body can easily regulate it.