Quote Originally Posted by guidofatherof5 View Post
Yes, and some(very few) people smoke their entire lives and live to be old.
Still, I don't think I'm going to risk smoking. The odds are not in my favor.
The odds are not in the snakes favor when it comes to goldfish/minnows or other fish containing thiaminase and once it has done it's damage there is not much that can be done to save the snake.
I know you were not implying that goldfish were OK to feed. I'm glad your snakes lived that long and you got to enjoy them.

I'm only reacting to what might be misconstrued by your statement. Many people come to this sight as visitors and may only read a small amount of info. contained here. Thiaminase is a real problem out there since pet shops repeatedly sell goldfish/rosy reds to people to feed their garters.
I was one of those people who bought them and can thank the members of this forum for enlightening me.

I, by no means meant to get on a bandwagon but I have witnessed snakes die from thiaminase. I don't think any snake owner should have to see what it does.

Me either, I agree wholeheartedly. Considering the garters of my teenage years all died a seemingly horrible death consisting of loss of balance and convulsions... I fed them goldfish! It's just odd to me that different snakes I had at different times in my life before I knew better were all fed the same food item and all died of the same symptoms within a year or two of being captive. And we are talking snakes that never contacted one another! It's one of the reasons i decided to start connecting with other garter keepers online... I knew something was not right!
Simply because a snake lived on it without ill effects doesn't mean it should be flaunted as if a reason to justify using a KNOWN source of thiaminase. How long an animal lived, and such a small sample of specimens is not viable as to determining if those snakes actually, internally, thrived. Possibly the effects were greatly lessened, to a non-lethal, non-visual extent, due to the fish being rotated into the diet and not used as a dietary staple?

It will greatly confuse newcomers on this site and make them think twice about switching to healthier and KNOWN to be safe food items, such as f/t, thiaminase free fish. As Thomas (MasSalvaje) pointed out in another thread, bad husbandry techniques should not be treated as trivial and shrugged off as long as the animal seemingly does well. I've met quite a few people who've had bearded dragons and red eared sliders "for years" without any UV. I've met many people who kept iguanas in small, humidity-free wire cages for their entire life. They live, sometimes, but more often than not, they don't. Doesn't make it any less of a bad choice at all even if the animal SEEMS fine. It's pure negligence.

Once I learned that I had been basically feeding my snakes poison I did not blow it off I've owned up to I DID NOT DO MY HOMEWORK before I started keeping garters as a teen and I had terrible, horrible husbandry techniques, from feeder goldfish, to sand as substrate, to no quarantine periods. "they seem to have done/be doing just fine" is not an acceptable standard as far as I and many other serious hobbyists are concerned! So please, I am asking you nicely here, to not trivialize the thiaminase issue as it will only hurt our goals (it can't help in ANY possible way) of pushing people to practice better husbandry techniques regardless of whether they actually see results or not!

I want to point out that my only real issue with all of this is what may be misconstrued from your statements which I believe you deem to be harmless. I don't hate you and I'm not attacking you or anything.