Can’t get baby sand boa to eat, tried everything.

[Aaron_S]

Originally Posted by amhunt12

Hello, I purchased my little guy from a pet expo Oct. 21st. I was told he was roughly 2 mo and had eaten a week before the show and always ate live pinkies.

I have tried everything
-live
-frozen
-braining
-garlic
-leaving overnight
-dangling
-feeding in enclosure
-feeding outside of enclosure
-putting tub inside enclosure
-made mouse nest

He seems interested. He will look at it, come out of the sand to look at it, even sit by the mouse nest almost completely out of the substrate, but he will not eat.
He is in a 10 gallon aquarium, cal sand is substrate, has an under tank heater and a non light over tank heater I only turn on during the day, he has a water dish and a cardboard hide away. The temp range is 95 on one side and 70 on other. The hide away is on hot side

He weighs 6 grams and I saw on one site that hatchlings weigh around 7 or 8 grams. So he is not conserving body fat but might have lost weight. His skin also seems slightly loose.

I have a vet appointment for him on nov 16th, and I’m going to try another live pinkie next Monday.

You picked this animal up on Oct 21st. When you made this post it is Nov 9th. That is a total of 19 days you've had the animal and you've attempted TEN different ways to offer food. That's an average of every two days! You're trying way too hard here.

My recommendation for people is to not offer food for 5 days after getting a new animal. Then offer a meal and only offer a meal once every 5 days. You should be consistent in your offering too. All these changes are just so much.

I would offer a live pinky mouse over night left in the enclosure. If it's not eaten by morning then wait 5 days and try again, maybe, and I say maybe put it in a small deli container.

Originally Posted by DJC Reptiles

I would highly recommend checking out a vet like you said, there is a chance that the person you got him from got him impacted. ...

Wrong. Impaction is not a thing unless you have an unhealthy animal. Reptiles will pass substrate like anything else if they are healthy. There are no reasons to think this animal is unhealthy, aside from stress, right now.