Sirens are a fascinating fully aquatic salamander species that resembles an eel. They all have a distribution of the Southern United States into Northern Mexico.
As a captive they present few problems to maintain successfully – they are one of natures survivors and for this reason thrive in captivity. They are an evolutionary throw back, and seem to have an answer to every scenario – for example the adults have small lungs and gills too. This means they have a survival mechanism to survive drought, they can seal themselves in the mud of their pond should it dry up, to venture back out once the rain fills it back up. The long thin body is ideal for aquatic life, but with serpentine action, and small front limbs they can move quite well on land too.
An aquarium, with a minimum length of around 60cm, ideally twice that size, is ideal. The water doesn’t have to be deep around 20-30cm is fine. They do well in a naturally planted paludarium (a vivarium designed to be land and water) but will likely not venture onto the land at all. We have kept a siren successfully in a paludarium with species such as treefrogs. Lighting is fine with a LED that is suitable for plants, no UVB is required, and there must be areas where it is dark. Water temperature of around 20C is ideal. Real or artificial plants can be used, but as this is one of the only salamanders that is known to eat plants, caution is required with either.
A diet of worms, insects (pretty much anything they can cram in their mouths) is ideal – in the wild they will take vertebrate prey such as small frogs. As mentioned this species will also eat the leaves of plants – this can be in the form of edible pond plants.
A very hard to source species in the hobby.