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I have an 8 1/2 year old alligator snapper I bought as a hatchling from John Roberts at Loggerhead Acres. Vlad is now about 9 inches of shell length. Would only eat by angling up until this year. He secretively took guppies and later, minnows but nothing else until last spring. Ignored chicken, pork, nightcrawlers and pellets. Wouldn't eat dead minnows either. Once in a while I'd have trouble getting minnows and I'd put a few goldfish in there (very few due to fears about copper sulfate or iodine treatments in goldfish). Last year I wasn't careful enough doing a water change, and lost a couple of goldfish, but was too lazy to net them out of the tank. I came back 90 minutes later and found he was not so picky. I'd been keeping him at 78 degrees. When I took the temp up to 84, his appetite tripled. Worms, pellets, chicken red peppers, dead fish and mice are all on the menu now. I don't know how to download photos and attach them. He's in a 50 gallon breeder tank in 9" of water with a heater protected in a piece of PVC. Has a half-log cave and used to turn into a rock whenever he was being observed. For the past 14 months or so, he's lost the shyness. He comes out of the cave when I approach, and walks the tank when I leave, just in case I dropped in food and he didn't notice.

clifton said:

I have an 8 1/2 year old alligator snapper I bought as a hatchling from John Roberts at Loggerhead Acres. Vlad is now about 9 inches of shell length.

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....Its a 9 year old alligator snapper and its only 9 inches long...? That doesn't seem right.

predatorkeeper87 said:

....Its a 9 year old alligator snapper and its only 9 inches long...? That doesn't seem right.

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They grow very slow


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Yeah, I found Loggerhead Acres/John Richards (got his last name wrong in the original post) very helpful and others generally report him as very fair. He patiently answered my questions by phone and I'd certainly do business with him again if I suddenly got crazy enough to keep two of these critters in the house. The consensus on growth is that they can get to over 200 lbs, but it takes over 200 years. Mine most likely grew slower at first as I'd had the water heated to only the mid 70's. I heard 82 degrees is ideal, and when I changed to that it really kicked up Vlad's metabolism. My prior experience was with common snappers, cooters, chicken turtles, sliders and eastern painted turtles, and their growth rate is much faster. He has never warmed up to handling, so I try not to disturb him except for tank cleaning and showing the neighbor kids the reason for the locking tank lid. After seeing him bite through a stick, carrots and a plump goldfish, I don't want to volunteer a finger. When he wouldn't eat with spectators present, we set up a video camera and taped him angling. It was three hours of being immobile, then "BAM!". Fast forwarding to the lone action scene was interesting. His movements were minimal and as slow as the minute hand on a clock, until he banged that bear trap shut on the fish.

I've kept turtles for most of my life, and I'm not young. In 1978 I bought a Florida red bellied cooter from a pet store that was closing. They had kept it as a display animal. They estimated her age as 25 (the same as my age at the time). She and a chicken turtle and a couple of other red bellies lived in my backyard pond from May to mid-October each year, and moved to a basement pond for the winters. Last winter I had them drydocked for a few days and my furnace malfunctioned, venting carbon monoxide into the basement. I was horrified to find them all dead. Jill was 60 and the other three were 23. Vlad was at the other end of the basement and was not affected. I was shocked and depressed for many weeks. My nephew pointed out that they were my "canaries in a coal mine" and that it would be only a matter of time till the fumes came up to the first floor. I used to take Jill, a common snapper, a red eared slider and Vlad to local grade schools and do about a 30 minute classroom presentation. The alligator snapper was rightly compared to a dinosaur by the kids in a Philadelphia public school. They were always impressed when I'd show a photo of a guy struggling to lift a grown 200+ pound specimen.