Hellbender giveaway!

Hi Jesper,
There are two issues involved with this topic and they are very intertwined.
1) What we think the animal needs;
2) What the animal actually needs;
What the animal actually needs in the way of space is dependent upon several items, shelter, food and (if available) access to mate. (I'm going to be using some generalizations here as these there are exceptions to the "rules").
These in general determine the amount of space required in the wild but this does not always carry over into captivity for amphibians and other herps.
When food is supplied to the amphibian as needed to meet the caloric requirements of the amphibian, then the need for space to forage for food decreases as the animal no longer needs to forage as far and/or as long for food. (In P. cinereus, territories are smaller when access to high caloric food items is provided for example). Shelter is provided (ideally with the proper temperature and other requirements otherwise the problem can be self resolving....). Access to a mate; this is totally controlled by the keeper and in some set ups there isn't even the chemical cues from a prospective mate to influence the animal to look for a mate.
There is some variability for each species. Trying to keep Pachytriton labiatus the same as P. brevipes will result in a rapid population reduction as the territorial issues become evident.
P. cinereus in the wild can control a territory of greater than a square meter. Does this mean that to keep P. cinereus in captivity for long periods of time I need to supply each pair with at least a square meter of space? If so, then this has not been demonstrated in the literature nor in my personal experience.
Given that when the water levels decrease in the wild, P. waltl cluster together under rocks until the water levels rise again (possibly months as I understand it) makes me curious why you feel a 300l aquarium is insufficent for 6 P.waltl as these animals have no territorial requirements. (I have the same P. waltl on exhibit that I recieved over 7 years ago (long enough I can't remember exactly when). There are five of them in about 20 gallon (75 l), where they have spawned repeatedly. (In fact during a cage scrub down, I had them spawn in a 5 gallon (19 l) aquarium where they were being held for 5 hours.
In my case, I maintained a hellbender for more than 5 years in a space of less than 300l (and the animal was sent to a Zoo in Ashboro, N. Carolina where it is still alive last I checked) and prior to my taking care of the animal it was kept for about 5 years in about 50 gallon (190l) aquarium filtered with an undergravel filter powered by airstones. (So as a wild collected adult it has been alive in captivity for about 17 years now..). I have also worked with Andrias, and reared them in the same conditions as listed above for the hellbenders until they were returned to the Cincinatti Zoo. In five years they went from about 4 lbs to over 20 lbs each (they were eating skinned adult rats when I packed them up to ship them out).
In general, there are two criteria that can be used to measure success in husbandry (what the amphibian actually needs), they are
1) whether or not the animal will reproduce under the conditions in which it is kept and
2) longevity.
Failure with the above #1 may simply be the result that we simply do not know the cues for the species in question as opposed to meeting the "needs" for the animal (longevity).

Ed

Hi Mike,
I won't put words in Dick's mouth so I will use my own voice to make my opinion known. (BTW, if I remember Dick's article he initially used a fan on the top of the aquarium to use evaporative cooling to drop the aquarium temperature on warmer days...)
(If some of my wording is weird please excuese it as I am on some painkillers that make you sleepy).
I'm not out to crucify anyone but this is where people go for information on caudata (and occasionally on other species). You can google up the old threads and see information from specific posts.
On occasion, there are guesstimates on husbandry requirements made by people who have no experience with the species in question made as if there definite information backing the claim.
Anyone can make guesstimates based on what is known about a genus but the reason for the guesstimate should be also be made.
For example if someone asked me for husbandry info on Pachytrition for a species I am not familar with; I would base the husbandry on P. labiatus as this would be a more conservative guesstimate due to the aggressiveness of P. labiatus and refer them to here for better info.
To refer to and reword the comment that got me started on this was that a 12 inch hellbender needed a 150 gallon aquarium set up as a fast running stream or else it would not be properly housed.
Hellbenders are also found in deep water rivierine systems where the water is not "fast flowing". There needs to be some current flow to prevent the CO2 from building up around the animal but as long as the dissolved oxygen content is high enough and the temperature requirements are cool enough then the hellbender should be fine.
So when I saw the posting the first item that crossed my mind was a 12 inch (30.5 cm) salamander in a 72 inch (183 cm) long aquarium. If we used these size ratios then the housing of many of the commonly kept newt species in a ten gallon aquarium does not meet these specifications yet these newts live for long periods (years and/or decades) and often reproduce.
So I was curious as to where the 150 gallon fast stream estimate came from as this did not necessarily fit with my personal experience with the species in question or my understanding of the salamander's needs.

At least from what I remember from my college days the release of animals from the University's collection should need to follow a policy that has been set for aquiring and deaquiring animals (I know this occurs today when Zoos and Universities deal with joint projects). I would rather see the animal be released to a Zoo or other University then what I remember my University doing which would be to pickle the animal and put in the collection.

Ed

well i told the professor that i was probably not going to be able to accept the salamander (sigh). I asked him if it would be sent to a zoo, but he told me it wasnt. he said that it was going to be preserved(pickeled as ed put it). So now its going to die. I whant to take it and then give it to a zoo but i think there is a rule about giving away school property. Any who, i dont think a zoo would accept an animals froma private person, since i dont give animals to the zoo allt he time.

"The Hellbender is one of North America's largest salamanders (the largest in terms of body mass), reaching lengths of up to 22 inches or more. Its large size, flattened body and wrinkles of loose skin make this salamander easy to identify. It is also entirely aquatic and transformation from larva to adult (metamorphosis) is incomplete with adults lacking eyelids and retaining one pair of gill slits. They live almost exclusively in rivers and streams that are not polluted, hiding by day under rocks and in crevices and foraging by night. They eat all sorts of invertebrates and even small fish They prefer streams with fast moving water and relatively constant temperatures. Breeding occurs in late summer or early fall. Males remain at the egg laying site and guard the eggs until they hatch, which can take 45-75 days. They are very slimy animals but this is their defense; many predators find their slime to be quite unpalatable. Two subspecies are recognized: the Eastern Hellbender, C. a. alleganiensis, and the Ozark Hellbender, C. a. bishopi. The Eastern Hellbender has small dark spots on its back and sides and a uniformly colored chin, while the Ozark Hellbender has larger black blotches and a darkly mottled chin."

http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/narcam/idguide/crypto.htm

This was the info I based the assumption of a 500l tank would be a nice START. Say that a well treated one will reach at least 22". That is about 55 cm. I can only repeat what I said previously, I feel that it is wrong to keep a that big salamander in a 35l or a 70l tank, I even get upset when people are talking about keeping them in such a small setup.
I wouldn't feel comfortable having a smaller tank than 500l. If you will say that the salamander will be less comfortable in a bigger(500l) than a smaller(200l), I will certainly change my opinion but until then it stays the way it was.

By the way maybe my opinion is really skewed here but I don't think a 500l tank is that big.....
Hell, I have friends with 1000l tanks for keeping fish.....

Honestly, I even think a 500 l tank is small - I'll probably go for a 1000l+ tank if I ever decide to keep a cryptobranchidae.

I really respect what especially Ed says, but in this matter I must say that my opinion is based more on some weird sense of morality that demands that these species are given more space than the minium required space for survival and breeding.


Hell, I'm sure that a homo sapiens sapiens locked in a 10 square m cell would survive for quite some time if fed properly and it might even breed if you let in the opposite gender

Is that the optimal care for that species too?
Instead of a hellbender I might get myself a human then!


Btw the text between the two smilies are A JOKE, but you can crucify me for that anyway if you wish...lol

Anyway Jesse, why don't you just take it on for a while then? Then either give it the accomodation Ed suggests or give it away - Kind of strange if the school would object to giving it to a zoo... I'm sure Ed or Dick can take it on anyway! Right Guys?

(Message edited by jesper on March 16, 2004)

Hi Jesper,
One of the points that is often missed when talking about maximal sizes in relation to the size of the end enclosure is that these are the extremes. While amphibians continue grow throughout their lives, growth dramatically slows once sexual maturity is reached. As I understand it, growth slows to the point that size can be used to measure age class in hellbenders. Very few hellbenders will ever reach 22 inches unless they are very old (which is possible as they can potentially live for more than 75 years). So I would recommend putting it in your will if you ever aquire one.
Once they sexually mature (which I suspect this one would be, it would grow very very slowly.
If you look back at my original post, I recommended a minimum of a 55 gallon (208 l) (so I agreed with you Mike) to start with as the bottom size to keep a single hellbender. And this was due to the fact that there is a fair amount of floor space for the animal to move around. 48 inches long (I forget how wide) 122 cm)
Going back to your original post, 75 gallon (284 l) would be for a smaller sized pair and the bottom starting size setup/aquarium. A 75 gallon aquarium is 48 inches long and I believe 24 inches wide (122 cm by 61 cm) so there is sufficent floor space for multiple hiding spots to allow for normal behaviors. This is another species that needs a larger floor area as opposed to a taller water column. (If I remember right (not necessarily accurate in my current condition) 150 gallon tanks while six feet long are only 18 or 20 inches wide but are very tall so the amount of floor space available is not that different from some smaller sized aquaria)
The majority of the hellbender diet in the wild consists of crayfish to the point that while they will opportunistically feed on other food items they are considered to crayfish specialists.
I understood the joke and got it before reaching your point of clarification but animals that require social interactions to continue with normal behaviors are one of the major exceptions. Which is why aberrant behaviors can develop in people and other primates maintained in isolation. There are other examples but I'm too tired to dig them out at the moment (parrots come to mind with sterotypical behaviors such as feather plucking) I haven't seen or heard of a reference of an amphibian that develops these problems when kept in isolation. I've seem stereotypical behaviors in Siren lacertina when the animal outgrew the size of the exhibit and was moved to a larger enlcosure as soon as the behavior was noticed.
I'm not crucifing you (or at least this is not my intent) but this is at least a semi-serious subject that needs to get dusted off once in awhile.

Ed

Hi Mike,
It is legal. As for moral, that is something that can be discussed.
Most institutions have a policy under which they have to operate with aquiring and deaquiring animals. AZA Zoos have a set of very strict rules and each Zoo has a committee that it needs to pass the potential disposition of the animal through.
I suspect Universities are the same. It is possible that the original collection permit specified that when the animal was no longer going to be used that it would end up in the preserved collections. When I had a collecting permit for PA, I had to specify the end use of any of the animals that I collected for the Zoo. The state made the stipulation that none of the animals or their offspring would be released to the pet trade as part of the collecting permit. The fact that it is uncommon in collections would tend to drive it in that direction. Think Great Auk....
Just some thoughts,
Ed

wow what a turn around. First i cant get it now i can. wow. But yeah im goign to try and get to my professor and see if i can still get the hellbender from him, hopefully its not dead yet.....

Hi Mike,
Maybe I wasn't clear but there isn't any legality issue with giving it to a Zoo as long as it was legally aquired and the collection permits do not prohibit any "change in ownership". I know for a fact that the Philadelphia Zoo is looking for a hellbender for exhibit and plans on aquiring some larva or juveniles if possible for potential breeding. The animal for exhibit doesn't need to have any locality data as it would be for education.
If Jesse wants to have his prof contact me off the board I can put him in touch with my boss..

Well the Great Auk is proabably the classic example of deliberate over collection for the scientific community.
As I understand it, most collecting for preserved specimen collections no longer consists of collecting every specimen that can be located but instead a small sample is collected.
If I remember correctly, some collections now allow range extensions and other items to be established with photographic evidence although I do not know the requisite items that would need to be photographed to prove the species in species complexes. I suspect you would still need to pickle the animal.
Some thoughts
Ed

I thought I would chime in on the chiller vs. non chiller issue. I had been maintaining a pair of hellbenders that have been on exhibit for about 17 years now. Apparently when they came in they were close to adult size. The exhibit they are in holds about 400 gallons, is filtered with a sand filter, and is chilled into the '50s. Because of the large set up and filters, I admit that these animals have been completely low maintenance on my end. A former herp keeper from the Tennessee aquarium claims that we have the most visible hellbenders on display in the country! There is one in particular that prefers to stay mashed up against the glass in one corner, and he rarely moves from that spot.

I personally would not consider having a Hellbender without having the means to keep the water cool. However I have spoken to a person to maintains a large collection of old world venomous snakes that apparently has kept a Hellbender in the same "greenhouse" as his snakes without a chiller. What the exact temperatures are I do not know, he claims to "just keep them on the bottom shelf ".


Mr Bartlett: Certainly no bad advice was given here on the captive husbandry of hellbenders, there is no point in disparaging forum users that are well-meaning, like you suggested. But they are at no-fault in having little to no experience with an animal that requires relatively large and expensive setups, and is protected and never available in the pet trade. Having no experience with an animal does not exclude someone from knowing the rights and wrongs of its captive care. Remember, this is a hobbyist forum, and hellbenders are rarely available to hobbyists.

Hi Kory,
FWIW I was the one who started the commentary by questioning the stipulated minimal housing requirements not Mr. Bartlett and continued the commentary afterwards (although I hope I explained why well enough that no one would be offended).
Ed

great pic

Doesn't seem to be a brown trout, looks more like a Salvelinus spec. to me. Nice pic of a nice animal.

Ralf

Mike: that probably was a brown trout, the last batch we got in had a very dominant trout that was picking on the others, this was one that was probably weakened by the constant chasing. I believe that the Hellbender in that picture weighs around 600 grams, I do not know their exact length. It took him about 10 minutes to get the entire fish down.

The exhibit for the longtails is finally coming along, check your e-mail..

Ed: check your e-mail