Amphiuma and Siren

Does anyone here have experience with housing Amphiuma sp. or Siren intermedia? Are either of these even legal to possess?

Hi Dan,
I work with S. intermedia, S. lacertina and A. pholeter. For the two siren species (which can be kept the same, as long as you have a bigger cage for lacertina look at the species account on caudate central). What kind of info are you looking for regarding amphiumas?
And finally yes they are legal to own pending whatever your local or state laws require.
Ed

Ed,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I have kept Taricha successfully, with some individuals living close to 20 years in captivity. I've been thinking of expanding into another taxon and find sirens and amphiuma quite interesting beasts. However, from the little I've gleaned from on-line sources, they appear to be somewhat more difficult to care for in captivity. I don't want to tackle them unless I can care for them. I've also considered Pseudobranchus, as they are smaller. But once again, I thought I saw that they were prtected throughout their range.

So any information or suggestions as to their care (or referral to books, etc.) would be appreciated. Also, I don't want to purchase animals taken from the wild. Do you know of anyone captive breeding any of these taxa?

Many thanks

Dan

Hi Dan,
No problem with the delay sometimes I don't get a chance to check the list for a week or more. If you have the space they are all very easy to keep. However if you want to only buy cb then the only two species that I am aware of being captive bred are the dwarf sirens P. a. axanthus and P. s. striatus (And at least for me P. a. axanthus is easy to breed. I just had a group lay eggs in a five gallon tank. First reproduction about three years old). The larger species have not been cb at this time but legal wild caught animals are available (and be warned Siren species can live for more than 14 years). In most parts of thier range these guys are pretty common but are pretty secretive. So the actual populations may not be well understood.
As for A. pholeter they are also very easy to keep provided you have access to alot of blackworms. The larger amphiumas seem to be as easy to keep as the larger Siren species are (maybe Erik will read this and have a few pointers).
Not to keep saying the same thing over and over again but look at the Siren information under species on the caudate central link (http://www.caudata.org/caudatecentral)
Hope this helps,
Ed


Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I have kept Taricha successfully, with some individuals living close to 20 years in captivity. I've been thinking of expanding into another taxon and find sirens and amphiuma quite interesting beasts. However, from the little I've gleaned from on-line sources, they appear to be somewhat more difficult to care for in captivity. I don't want to tackle them unless I can care for them. I've also considered Pseudobranchus, as they are smaller. But once again, I thought I saw that they were prtected throughout their range.

So any information or suggestions as to their care (or referral to books, etc.) would be appreciated. Also, I don't want to purchase animals taken from the wild. Do you know of anyone captive breeding any of these taxa?

Dan, assuming you are in the US, then two places to start searching for CB animals would be the keepers listed at USCR (http://www.caudata.org/~uscr/index.shtml) and Eelman (http://www.expage.com/itsalive). I've heard good things about Eelman's reputation, but haven't dealt with him myself.