wots the worst piece of reptile advice you've ever been given??

at petco the girl kept yelling because i said can i have 2 pinkies for my snake
she goes "ohh you shouldnt feed them that FROZEN mice can bite your snake"
i was like wtf!???she wanted me to get crickets

skullmaster said:

this thread amuses me hehe.....
when i got my first snake the kid at superpet told me if i don't get a UV light my snake won't last even a year... plus they had my snow listed as snow motley... i didn't know for a few months that it was not a motley(i was still learning) oh and at that same store anerys are called "black cornsnake"

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The pet store by me has the same label on their corns.

I was also told the UV light thing. They insisted that it would be dead because it could not build up calcuim.

you only need to feed them once a month

"Its an Albino"

The first corn I got was from a little smelly pet shop that gave me some good and some bad advice. Good advice.
Corn are great beginner snakes, you might want to try one before you get a boa or python.

bad advice.
Corns need UV, they can do with out it if you put a drop of vitamin supplement on the food you give them (game me name of some beta-something baby vitamin drops).
Corns grow to an average of 6 feet.
Astroturf is the best bedding.

Other bad advice or misconceptions that people have told me
The grow to the size of the cage
But they might eat your baby when full grown! (I don't even have a child)
You can feed them ground beef, it's just not as nutritious as a mouse


Here is some advice I'd like to know if it's true.
Can you feed cornsnakes eggs (of appropriate size)?
I've been told by more than one snake breeder that you can feed them quail eggs and full grown ones chicken eggs. I'd do that just to see it done if it's safe. and would they take the egg as is or would you have to scent it?

ive seen snake take in the egg as is then spit out the shell eating just the yoke

Worst advice I've ever gotten:

Corns need UV light--pretty common bad advice.

Corns need a playmate so they don't get bored.

Corns can't digest fur so they regurgitate it. This is normal, and no cause for worry.

Corns eat eggs then regurgitate/spit out the shells.

WRATHCHILD798 said:

ive seen snake take in the egg as is then spit out the shell eating just the yoke

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I really hope that was the bad advice that he was given and he doesn't actually believe that. But going on the basis that he was trying to catch a corn snake with duct tape traps, I think he is serious.

Colleen360 said:

I really hope that was the bad advice that he was given and he doesn't actually believe that. But going on the basis that he was trying to catch a corn snake with duct tape traps, I think he is serious.

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Unless he means egg-eating snakes?

True, but I was thinking of it in regards to cornsnakes.

This is the best thread!

Where would I begin???

When we had our iguanas, many, many years ago, we got loads of bad advice. In particular, we were to put pebbles in their cages for their gizzards to digest their tinned dog food. (At the zoo we worked at we fed them as carnivores.)

My ex-husband's friend kept on with bad advice at our daughter's party the other day. (He knows EVERYTHING, by the way. In fact, my ex's mates should have been the tip-off not to date the sod! You can judge a person well often by the friends they keep.) "You can't feed live because the snake will get a taste for human flesh." "Eventually your snake will get big enough to eat your dog, and your TODDLER!" (the ball python, or the corns?!?!?!?)

Not to mention he rode me for going to school to be social worker. "None of them care about what they do!" And he mentioned I'm a bad mum because (very rarely) I go out for a drink or two!

I know I've heard loads more bad advice. Mainly, it's that it's disgusting to have snakes in a home with children. Better than icky rodents, like hamsters.

Anyway, :-offtopic
Yeah! I got me first season "Doctor Who" DVDs by post today!!!!!! :cheers:

Have a great weekend!
Carrie

This has been an amusing thread.
I had to add this little anecdote mainly because it shows just how pathetic some "petstore" people are.
I may have mentioned a while ago that my daughters(azsnakegirls) got a 'job' at the petstore across the street from our apts. Basically they were hanging out there a lot so the manager decided to give them a few buck a day to help feed/clean the animals. Unfortunately it didn't last too long after the girls started trying to tell the 'manager' that the Betta fish were dying because they needed to eat and be cleaned more than once a week, that the majority of snakes they have should not be kept on reptisand(all they use), corns don't eat crickets(what is it with petstores and crickets?) that the baby corn in the critter keeper INSIDE of the BP cage was scared, etc, etc. I guess when they told a customer something that contradicted his advice he couldn't take it anymore. Pretty bad when a couple 11yr olds and a 9yr old know more than the guy running the place :grin01:

Today I had a couple come into work looking to buy an iguana. As I was asking them a bunch of questions to determine whether or not they should really buy one they asked "what are you guys feeding them right now?" So I told them that they are eating different types of fruits and vegetables along with vitamin and calcium powder. They looked at each other funny and said "Iguanas are supposed to eat lots of crickets and meal worms." I told them about the iguana diet in the wild and they looked at each other and gave me this look like "what a stupid girl!" Then they tried to tell how they read it in a book and blahblahblah... They also thought that iguanas get six feet NOT including their tail. Can you imagine an iguana that huge?!?

My first snake, Venus, was sold to me as a "banded corn" pretty sure she was a kistache tho hehe, anyhow she was maybe 20 inches long, MAYBE and the pet store told me to feed her 1 live adult mouse every 2-3 months. Then with Treasure... he was covered with old shed which they said was normal, and he was sold to me as an okeetee het stripe and butter... hes a normal =P I showed the people here his picture a day or 2 after I got him and most people figured hed die, but hes doing SUPER now =)

The store I got Treasure from had a big white snake one day.. listed as "albino corn snake" we reseached it and figured it was an albino black rat, so we told them. 2 days later it was listed as "snow ghost corn" ~,~ I told them, "That sanke has a respiratory problem" (it was gasping and had its mouth open, throat was all crammed with pus) they said "No no, they're supposed to do that, its panting to cool down" ... ... ... *smacks forehead* It was dead the next time I went in, they took it out and put a BP in the tank.. without cleaning it.

LOL, this is great. I can't think of any really bad advice...as I usually know more than the people at pet stores talking and don't listen to them.

As for the "you're insane to have snakes near your kid" thing...There was a discussion on this recently on a GTP forum, and what said it best was 2 pictures...the first was of a toddler next to a full grown pit bull. the second was of a toddler holding an adult GTP. 1 of these is perfectly acceptable in society...1 is safe...

no bad advice but...

I once went into a local petstore that had about 30 hatchlings packed into a ten gallon tank on pine shavings. They had no uth, but instead had a metal halide pendant light (the kind for reef aquariums) over the tank and it was cooking the snakes. In addition, the water bowl was dry, their were crickets in the tank, about 5 corns were dead, and the snakes were so dehydrated/hungry that their skin was hanging off in folds. Oh and I forgot to mention that most of them had partial sheds stuck all over them. Yeesh, what a mess that was! needless to say, I did an about face and walked back to the car.

scottsquatch said:

I once went into a local petstore that had about 30 hatchlings packed into a ten gallon tank on pine shavings. They had no uth, but instead had a metal halide pendant light (the kind for reef aquariums) over the tank and it was cooking the snakes. In addition, the water bowl was dry, their were crickets in the tank, about 5 corns were dead, and the snakes were so dehydrated/hungry that their skin was hanging off in folds. Oh and I forgot to mention that most of them had partial sheds stuck all over them. Yeesh, what a mess that was! needless to say, I did an about face and walked back to the car.

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Report the owner, to find out your states stand on animal cruelty, search here

http://www.animal-law.org/statutes/index.html

To make sure the laws havn't changed in your state, search them here

http://lp.findlaw.com/

Cypher2004 said:

when i was first concidering a repitilian pet, a guy told me (in an actual reptile shop in Leeds, UK) that cornsnakes were constricters and ate crickets...

now, i still haven't worked this one out and if anyone can shade some light, id love to know!

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WHOAAAA! :roflmao: I can see some corn constricting a cricket..... hilarious!

I also think you should not have walked away but tried to make the owner do something about it...

paulh said:

Worst advice was given to a guy I once met. He came over to see a pal of mine and brought his noneating boa constrictor. My buddy asked him why there was some lettuce and soda crackers in the cage. That was what the pet store said it ate. It really shocked the guy when the snake chowed down on a weanling rat.

On the vegetarian thread, just tell them that you use the mice for plant food. Plants gotta eat too.

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Unbelievable!!! I think even most non snake owners now that snakes eat meat... in insect or mouse form... I never met someone asking if my snakes eat veggies or fruit.... only mice or sometimes insects.