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22 Eargesplitten posted:Is there a good crash course for beardie owning out there? I never really had any interest in lizards but nobody else could take him on short notice and I really like him. YouTube is rotten with them I’d probably go with like Wickens Wicked Reptiles and Clint’s Reptiles first. I don’t particularly like GoHerping but I remember his beardie content being pretty solid + detailed. But the same probably goes for any of the other major herping channels—I feel like a good beardie guide is probably the minimum bread and butter for a successful reptile channel. and I’m sure Snake Discovery probably has a really excellent video. Also putting in a plug for Animals At Home because the dude’s channel is super small but he’s like the leader when it comes to focusing on going above and beyond with ethical and evidence-based keeping
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May 11, 2022 18:59
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22 Eargesplitten posted:
This is my actual local store he talks a lot about temps, habitat, food and shows you how to sex your dragon - also that dragon is even bigger now and will run over to people in his enclosure to greet them like a little puppy dog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZDlMJEgwJQ
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May 11, 2022 20:52
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Fluker Farms will ship you live crickets, as few as 100 at a time. If that's too much to feed at once (for a single beardie it definitely is) you'll need a place to store them where they won't die, and that's not as trivial as it sounds - they need ventilation, cardboard to crawl on, water they won't drown in, food, and they still die a lot and stink like crazy and make a racket and easily escape. That's still probably better than dealing with a regular drive to another city just to buy $8 of crickets.
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May 11, 2022 20:55
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honestly, if the beardo’s already eating prepared food and veg out of a bowl I don’t see why OP couldn’t just do canned or freeze dried bugs and mix them in with the regular diet. Maybe do some live dubias or crickets or larvae every few weeks as enrichment and for variety. Or do live larvae (not super fatty waxworms, but maybe mealworms or hornworms) that can be kept refrigerated in a deli cup. Meat shouldn’t be the staple base for a beardie anyway, so I’d be less worried about feeding perfectly gut-loaded or super lean bugs than I would be about simply feeding a balanced and diverse diet with bugs in it. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 21:08 on May 11, 2022 |
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May 11, 2022 21:05
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Oh yeah absolutely, live bugs as prey help to add enrichment and make a good supplement to the diet but I don't think beardies necessarily need to have a steady, always-on supply on a weekly basis or anything like that.
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May 11, 2022 21:19
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I have an update and oh my god I've never cried over a snake before but Glencora just ate for me and I'm bawling. Two days after I put her in juvenile vivarium she eats, all day I've had a warm mouse and rat chub by the vents wafting the smell into her viv, then I left a fresh warm small mouse on a paper towel in her viv, blocked all light and buggered off, checked back half an hour later and she's eaten it. We know she eats mouse so I'm going to increase the size of mouse from the small mice she's used to and then see how we go from there, hopefully I can convince her that African soft fur rats are superior to mice. Guenther was also a good boy and ate two very hefty chubs so I'm bumping him to weaner rats soon. The mother loving star of the day. 
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May 12, 2022 21:18
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Okay, turns out I'm keeping this beardie. The vet says she's pretty young, but she's also got a couple of infections, one on the tail and one around the cloaca, so betadine gauze for now, if it doesn't get better then antibiotics. What size of terrarium in terms of gallons should I be looking at for a single beardie? I'm thinking like 30 or 40? My guess is that's about the size of the fish tank that she was living in, just better suited to use for lizards. Do they tend to gnaw on stuff in their environment? I'm thinking about 3d printing some furniture and climbing stuff for her, I've got a food safe plastic but that doesn't mean it should be food. Is there a way to predict when they are going to poop relative to when they eat or anything? A few days ago I saw her happily munching away and a few hours later she took a massive dump down my back when I had her on my shoulder, all over my desk chair and freshly washed sweater. If there's some kind of rule of thumb of let them be for a few hours after they eat that would save me doing laundry.
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May 14, 2022 18:19
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When they go they go. Although I had a egyption uromastix for 15 years and I swear he held it in just for me. you want the largest enclosure you can get, once you start decorating you run out of room real fast, 36″ x 18″ x 18″ which is 40 gall, is the smallest an adult that size will fit in but you could stand to go proportionally shorter and wider. For lizards it's a simple rule; the correct size of housing is your [lizard lizard lizard] you tend to find longer is not much more money, where the expense kicks in is when you need to go up and deep with the special arboreal enclosures. Basically you need a hot end and a cool end and if your lizard is spread out over both ends then they can't thermoregulate. You are running a dry viv so as long as the material isn't toxic to your animal or flammable it's fine. One thing they do like is different heights and wood, you really can massively increase the usable space with bits of wood. Treated wood is expensive and you can save a lot of money treating your own using a pressure cooker https://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/wood.shtml is a great guide that factors in wood that should be safe but humans keep treating them with pesticides making them useless for viv.
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May 14, 2022 19:12
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Smallest for a Beardie is a 40g breeder, next is 75g (which is far better). They don't need a lot of length, but that extra 6" depth is pretty good for them.
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May 14, 2022 20:40
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I forgot this. These are new and look like a good Beardie sized tank: https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/aqueon-rectangle-aquarium-60-breeder-tank
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May 14, 2022 20:41
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Obviously paint 3 sides matte black so it doesn't feel ENTIRELY like it's trapped in a glass box it does not understand.
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May 14, 2022 20:50
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Also and one other thing about tanks that you open from above, and I learned this while a tiny orange corn snake was dangling from my thumb, your hand swooping down from above looks like a bird and the instinct is to attack the hand bird predator. So what you do is come in from the other end of the viv slowly so they have time to recognise it as you.
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May 14, 2022 23:00
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I have a glencora update, the mouse wasn't too terribly small, yay. I don't hate this weight, she's 4 months old so this puts her in the middle, but what is very irritating is that if her past feeding hadn't been so bad she would be a big chunky lass. If I'm honest owning a lizard did not prepare me for "what I'll do is weigh the small and medium mice I have and" So this is Weighsnek and there isn't much more I can write about her lol, she's a normal ball python, very special to me, but like showing people without kids pictures of your baby it's "yup, that's a normal ball python alright"  edit: two more Weighsnakes who have given up, this is it lads, it's the end oh woe is me.     learnincurve fucked around with this message at 20:19 on May 15, 2022 |
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May 15, 2022 10:16
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I’m in civilization until this evening so I’m planning on going to one of the better stocked pet stores, maybe even specifically reptile store. I took her to the shelter so I could legally adopt her so if the previous owner that abandoned her comes back she has no legal claim, and I’m picking the beardie back up tomorrow or Thursday. Would a 150w ceramic be appropriate for nighttime in a very cold environment where the room will frequently get down to 50-60 degrees even in summer at night/early morning? I know for the daytime heat lamp 75 is recommended. I’ve got one of the dual bulb Zoomed lamp fixtures so I guess I could put the heat lamp on one, ceramic on the other, and timers to turn each on?
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May 17, 2022 17:14
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What you need is a pulse proportional thermostat or dimming thermostat to run ceramics that powerful at night, to be blunt a uncontrolled 150w ceramic will cook him - you *need* a thermostat, even a cheap dimming one will pay for itself in bulbs of both kinds. What they do is only feed through the power you need, so you can run a 200w bulb and it will only put though 40w of power if the temps are right and this massively extends the life of the bulb  If for some reason you can get hold of a bulb and no thermostat, then 50w ceramic is the highest I'd go.
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May 17, 2022 18:17
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Okay, I’ll see if Petco down here has that stuff, there’s a reptile store a little ways away but they have a bad reputation apparently for neglecting the animals they sell.
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May 17, 2022 21:37
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Be careful they don't try and sell you a regular on off thermostat just because that's what they have in stock, they only work for mats* and in my experience the cheap ones are super inaccurate, the basic exo terra one in my corn snake's baby viv can't hold at 30c, it's 28 or 31 but never 30. I tested the good and accurate habistat day night on off thermostat to make sure it wasn't the mat and it held it rock steady at 30c. *also reptile radiators but those will be rare where you are
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May 17, 2022 21:55
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The no longer sick wee snake update: So last night, the night before today's feeding I made the mistake of trying to do a full clean for him, this ended up with minicuve using his hide as a lion tamer's shield to protect my fingers. Reminder: All right then, so lets try a small fluff if he's that hungry after a shed, so I get out me bag of fluffs and start comparing the sizes to his shed. Find him a nice juicy one and get it warmed up. He investigates a bit and then snatches like a greedy boy. It's taking him a while so I'm stood there holding his hide up for him for ages, like on you go son in your own time, then as he eventually finishes I slowly lower it so as not to hurt his precious little tail. What I don't know is the little sod has circled round his bark under the hide and is waiting for it to go down so he can leap out and strike at the new mouse. It's my thumb, my thumb is the new mouse. Well, at least he's eating.
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May 19, 2022 12:20
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fierce little baby 
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May 19, 2022 13:00
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Glencora is hunting for a second mouse! This is the first time since we got her last Tuesday she’s been active and not hiding - just checked her again and she’s waiting on the paper towel now to see if another mouse magically appears
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May 19, 2022 14:47
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 She's fine, just absolutely affronted that I broke her toilet roll apart to get her unstuck.  (that humidifier is broken)
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May 20, 2022 23:49
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I could only find an on/off thermostat, but I got one of those, a 60w ceramic bulb, a 75w heat lamp, and an 18" fixture with tube UV lamp and brought the beardie home. I have the ceramic set up on the thermostat with the thermostat set to 75F and the probe at the cool end. The heat lamp and UV lamp are on a timer to match daylight hours. So far this has the cool end reading 70-75 throughout the day and the warm end at 85-90, not directly in the basking light. The shelter got some mealworms for her and I went to the grocery store and got some kale and blueberries for her. She has munched on the kale a bit, hasn't eaten any blueberries yet, but yesterday she ate some of her dry food and chowed down on like three mealworms so she's probably full. I hope she likes blueberries, a woman I went on a couple dates with last year had a bearded dragon that went crazy for blueberries. She's a little underweight, I don't think she ever got fresh food or live prey with her last owner so she might not have cared about her food beyond not starving. It also seems like some people exclusively feed them fresh vegetables, is that required or can I use a mix of dry food and fresh food? Being able to put out a big bowl of dry food and water to let her free feed when I have to be gone a few days would be ideal. I still need to put together some substrate and get a bigger tank, as well as get some more decorations and furniture and hidey-holes in there for her. Some of the guides I was reading were saying 120 gallon for a beardie, but it seems like the cheapest you can find that for is like $350, is that needed or is it more of a luxury? I also don't know if I'll have room for a 120 gallon tank when I move, I know I don't now. I think a 70 gallon would fit on my dresser though. I do have her out several times a day.
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May 21, 2022 05:53
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UK is the land of the cheap vivarium, it's a really easy diy project and you can customise your vivarium to the size of your available space and go as tall as you want with it. You get plywood and make a box with one side open and slot in your vivarium track/runners which come in a pair. Order two bits of glass, or acrylic/plexiglass if you are on a budget, for the sliding doors and that's literally it. Because all your lights are inside the viv you need ceramic fittings (Komodo) and guards
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May 21, 2022 09:47
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I feel like I should be able to google this but I'm not sure what to look for. Do I need to give my beardie a wide variety of vegetables at once or is just one type at a time okay? My main vegetables for personal consumption tend to be spinach and broccoli which apparently aren't good for them so I can't just give them the vegetables that I eat and I don't want to get a bunch of different types, mix them up, and then have 90% go bad because she only eats a few tablespoons per day.
22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 03:25 on May 31, 2022 |
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May 31, 2022 03:23
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Ok Comboomer posted:replacing/sizing up the two individual painted turtle enclosures and moving to much bigger tubs (self quoting from the aquarium thread)
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Jun 1, 2022 07:52
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I feel like I should be able to google this but I'm not sure what to look for. Do I need to give my beardie a wide variety of vegetables at once or is just one type at a time okay? My main vegetables for personal consumption tend to be spinach and broccoli which apparently aren't good for them so I can't just give them the vegetables that I eat and I don't want to get a bunch of different types, mix them up, and then have 90% go bad because she only eats a few tablespoons per day. It was absolute revelation when someone told me you could freeze veg at home and the Uromastix would eat it fine. We use baking trays and a chest freezer, spread out and then make little baggies of mixes. https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/uga_freeze_veg.pdf My custom enormo viv for guenther is here \o/ going bioactive with it so that will be me doing shitload of research, and then just asking Pixie at snakes n adders to just take my credit card and put what she knows I need in a box. edit: Update, the rescue ball python baby just smashed her chub rat, and it's the first time she's been offered anything but mouse. Bonus snoot 
learnincurve fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jun 2, 2022 |
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Jun 2, 2022 12:56
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learnincurve posted:It was absolute revelation when someone told me you could freeze veg at home and the Uromastix would eat it fine. We use baking trays and a chest freezer, spread out and then make little baggies of mixes. https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/uga_freeze_veg.pdf this. I've also heard of people straight up buying $1 bags of pre-frozen veg from the supermarket and simply portioning out/defrosting over time
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Jun 3, 2022 06:24
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Interesting idea, never thought of freezing it. She mainly eats at night anyway so that would give time for it to thaw out. I have to give the poor girl injectable antibiotics for a couple of infections she had before she got to me, I should have asked this to the doctor but is there any best time to do that from your experience? I'm wondering if feeding her a bunch of mealworms and waiting for her to be lying in the cold area in the evening would make her less energetic so she won't fight to get away as actively.
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Jun 5, 2022 21:49
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Interesting idea, never thought of freezing it. She mainly eats at night anyway so that would give time for it to thaw out. no advice on injectable antibiotics but most animals seem to tolerate meds better on a full stomach in general
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Jun 5, 2022 21:52
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My Nhandu chromatus spiderling, Rasputin, moulted yesterday. Have a lot of affection for this little guy, as I got him free with another tarantula and he was miniscule, likely 1st instar. Early on he survived me dropping his pot and the substrate going everywhere, hence his name. He's growing into a big, strong boy. Or girl. Still quite a way to go though before he reaches his 6-7 inch adult size.
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Jun 6, 2022 16:41
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Update: Things are going awesome with sneks, Glencora the ball python is going into shed and is pissed off about it, Guenther the Columbian rainbow boa is going into shed and looks like concrete. Megatron is now on fluffs every 6 days and is putting on weight. My short adult daughter/housemate annoyed that Glencora is mine and a baby has basically stolen my brand new custom 4ft vivarium and is getting a older ex-breeding male for herself, which is good because it was this or rats and the problem with rats is they live for 2 years and then break your heart. She’s having me a new custom 60” x 18” x 18” viv for adult Glencora made - has to be that low because reptile radiator. It’s going to look like an art installation and it will rule but till then Megatron.  edit: minicurve waited two weeks for a bag of rage in blue, which I think has set her up nicely for her future in reptile keeping. learnincurve fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jun 9, 2022 |
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Jun 7, 2022 16:39
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So yeh I’m aware I’m blogging a bit but this may help someone at some point. Glencora, 5 month rescue ball python, had bits of stuck shed, and it was layers of built up shed like scabs. I decided that as her feeding record had been so patchy that I would just concentrate on that and not mess her around with any of the 40 billion internet methods for stuck shed, and instead give her a moss box and humid hide. She is heated from above with a 80w reptirad reptile radiator which means the hide is at 85-90% humidity. She picked the humid hide, and had her shed and probably her first poo inside it and it was perfect. All the old shed, including the bits on the end of her tail came off and she now has a black head, although I’m still calling her normal in the face of mounting evidence. So what I’m saying is if you have a bad shed not caused by burns or scars then consider ignoring the internet, leaving well alone and filling the warm end hide with moss.
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Jun 12, 2022 18:49
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Ok Comboomer posted:no advice on injectable antibiotics but most animals seem to tolerate meds better on a full stomach in general She has thankfully gotten used to it to the point where she didn't even jump and try to run the last time that I gave her an injection. The discoloration is almost completely gone but the swelling is still there, frustrating. Two questions: 1) the vet recommended a felt mat or tile rather than sand, he said that they can eat the sand and get blockages. I would think play sand would work since kids eat that poo poo all the time and don't have to go to the hospital but kids also have larger digestive tracts than a bearded dragon. 2) any recommendations for one of those I think they're called pulse thermostats? The ones that can adjust the power of the heat lamp to maintain temperature. It's getting warm enough that during the day if it's on for the full normal time even the cold end gets up to 90, but if it's off then the hot end is only 70. For now I'm setting the lights to go on and off every hour to try to keep it within acceptable ranges but that's not a good long term solution. E: Oh yeah, 3) she's shedding a tiny bit but not much, is that normal as a leadup to a shed or something? She's gaining a lot of weight in a good way so that could have to do with it. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Jun 15, 2022 |
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Jun 15, 2022 20:27
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I had my dragons on play sand for years, no impact ever. But I also fed them in pretty big dishes so they weren't eating right off the dirt.
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Jun 15, 2022 21:33
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1. the sand thing is a myth, you don't really want them eating any substrate though, so in the feeding area put down paper towels or the felt if you already bought it. 2. Thermostats are my jam. Dimmer thermostats; most expensive, turn the power down. Bulbs, CHE, deep heat, but not mats. This is the one you want on a 100w bulb. Pulse proportional; will send though short bursts of power. I would honestly only ever use them for CHE with snakes, and not at all with reptiles who need a basking spot. On/off; Good for mats, bad for bulbs, can be used for CHE but will massively shorten the life, if you do use CHE then having a cheap one around isn't a terrible idea. I have habistat day and night dimming thermostat with a dual plug for your heat source and your UVB (which just turns on and off) the whole thing is completely programmable and it gives you all sorts of fancy stats, like I can tell you that it's currently putting though 4% power to keep the 100w CHE at 28c. The other one I use which is just for heat is the exo terra day/night 600w, and it has a neat trick - you can switch it from pulse, to dimmer, to on/off - it's also the same price as the simple habistat analogue dial dimming thermostat. The one I recommend is the habistat day night dimming, it's the expensive one but you program it once and other than regular checking with a thermometer gun it does all the work for you, and there is no "oh poo poo! the lights!" moment as you are getting the kids to school. 3. reptile shed in bits and will eat the shed, if she's getting up to the correct weight then you are going to see her shed A Lot. I'm not a dragon owner but I believe the goal is to collect a intact shed glove.
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Jun 15, 2022 21:33
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also my daughter's ball python totally means to be in that log, he's not got himself into a pickle and any slow shuffling towards the exit is completely coincidental.
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Jun 15, 2022 21:37
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Okay, I'll keep felt or something for the feeding area. I like to put the mealworms a little bit away and at odd angles to her so she gets a bit of a hunting feel snatching them up. I'll look at a dimmer thermostat since this is for her heat lamp, the ceramic heater at night is not a problem. Well, buy once cry once, I got a dimmer. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Jun 16, 2022 |
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Jun 15, 2022 23:19
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So I had that eagley hugging Peacemaker moment with Guenther who up until this point has freaked the gently caress out and turned into help help I'm being murdered mr pointy snake whenever you pull him out of his enclosure, I couldn't take a picture because he basically tied my wrists together before falling asleep. Glencora ruined it by freaking out, and if any snake could have hurled itself across a room and back into it's enclosure it would have been her. But anyway I handed minicurve's snek for the first time, he's ex-breeder and you can tell, only 6 so it will take some time and super slow work building trust but he did relax before making "I want to go back in my hide" signs. The only point to this post. Minicurve's snek, Flower. 
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Jun 19, 2022 09:00
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That is a really pretty snake! I know some balls are super extreme now, but I like the mostly normal coloration there combined with that bright calico white.
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Jun 20, 2022 02:09
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It was a real lady luck moment, we wanted to look at the size of the adult normals Ridgeway had but they were absolutely huge, so checked out what they had by age and he was there at CB 2016 685g. What is interesting is his belly is cream and the pixels are independent of it so in the flesh the white stands out even more.
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Jun 20, 2022 16:38
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