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My fiancee teaches science and inherited a pair of Eastern painted turtles that came with her classroom. I'll cut right to the chase: does this look like shell rot/infection to you? (these are two turtles although they look similar enough in pictures) The plastrons in particular are sort of rough and "big" feeling and you can't see the markings that painteds often (usually?) get. They've got all of their scutes.            The tank they've been kept in is adequately sized for the moment but they've got one of those dinky-rear end "for turtle" filters that look like a rock formation and don't accomplish jack poo poo. My partner's predecessor never changed their water so they were basically stewing in filth when she received them. In the weeks since then she's gotten down to a bimonthly water change cycle (not enough with that joke of a filter but a major improvement) and fixed up their basking area so that they could both fully haul out and dry off. Our plan was to adopt them and rehouse them in a stock tank at home once the school year ended but we can quarantine and start treating them today or tomorrow if necessary.
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Apr 12, 2018 16:03
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Dapper_Swindler posted:so i am probably getting an ackie. I will have enough room for it and found a great breeder for one. I found a good 50 gallon tank for it. and i have done a bunch of research but any other advice? Once that ackie’s in puberty you’re gonna want something better than a 50 gal tank for it. Otherwise I’m super jealous. I’d love an ackie monitor one day.
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Jun 16, 2018 20:39
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Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah, thats the plan so far. so where can i find a biggish cage. Coming from a rabbit, aquatic turtle, and tortoise perspective, your best bet is to build one yourself or find somebody good to build one for you. Your nearest reptile show should have people showing off/selling their wares, but going on forums or just googling should land you some companies/craftspeople. There’s some really gorgeous stuff out there, depending on your taste and budget. In my experience, fish tanks can be difficult to keep adequate airflow and dryness unless you’re going for full-desert environment.
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Jun 17, 2018 00:33
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AFAIK the rule with monitors is ‘the more room the better.’ They’re active and smart, so the more enrichment and environment you can give them the more of their behavior you get to enjoy. I know it’s not at all comparable but it’s definitely the case with rabbits. If you’ve got the budget for a monitor you could always go HAM and get something fancy built into a furniture piece.
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Jun 17, 2018 03:20
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i will if i get one. id get a skink but they need a much bigger cage and a varied diet(which is easier on some levels but hard on other) ackies just need crickets/feeder insects and some meet. I guess i am just worried that it won't "like" me. like i have read about how to tame them and most animals seem to like me but i am worried it will just hate my guts and it will be scared/miserable. In what world does a giant sedentary yam with legs and a blue tongue need a lot more room than an active monitor lizard? Also, the secret to taming reptiles is to get them young and handle them frequently/not like an rear end in a top hat. I think you’ll be fine. Once you’ve mastered Ackie husbandry you’ll be ready for a tegu in no time!
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Jun 22, 2018 03:35
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I feel like skinks are way more common in the hobby. Or at least they used to be. Also, is Backwater a good place to get herps? My personal rule of thumb is to stick to only captive-bred animals and avoid wild-caught or imports like the plague- unless they’re invasive and can be pulled from the wild without harming the ecosystem (Florida tegus/constrictors/iguanas). trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 21:04
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Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah. i have had bad and good experiences with cons and wild caught. I prefer if the stuff is CB and young. which backwater offers. like i wouldnt buy a frog online, but id buy a hardy lizard or snake. If you can ship from the US there are good online frog breeders. Josh’s Frogs for CB dart frogs comes to mind.
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Jun 22, 2018 22:56
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Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah. i had a long chat with my parents. reptile wise, ackies are out so all thats left are BTS or a ball python. my mother is very worried about salmonella since i am immunosuppressed. but i already own frogs, including some wild caught ones. I mean, don’t tongue kiss your reptile or lick your palms after handling its poop and you should be ok. As far as ackies being out- yeah, any kind of monitor lizard or similar (tegu, etc) is really like high medium-to-advanced-to-very advanced herp keeping. As much as I’d love an ackie of my own I wouldn’t really consider it until I was settled down and had a bit more long term stability in my life and career. And more experience. With your situation it may be more complicated, since-like many carnivores- monitors have a semi-symbiotic relationship with nasty nasty bacteria in their mouths and GI tracts. A bite or even some unlucky contact with the enclosure could potentially really mess you up. Skinks and pythons are pretty different in terms of needs and diet (skinks will take pinkies, etc as supplement if you feel like going there but a python is pretty much obligate rodent eating all the time/skinks are pretty sensitive to UV and heat while pythons will mostly want good hides) so I’d think for a bit about which one I’d rather start out with in your position. Neither are going to be super high-maintenance so it’s not unreasonable to get comfortable with one for a bit and then add another enclosure and animal down the road. God knows 95+% of herp keepers aspire to some degree of “we bought a zoo” syndrome. If you haven’t checked out YouTube channels like Clint’s Reptiles or Camp Kenan, I recommend them. Clint in particular has some good primer videos about different herps and Kenan’s fun to see an example of what “very advanced herp keeping” looks like wrt monitors, torts, and iguanas/etc.
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Jun 30, 2018 05:58
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i have read they are good on in 4' by 3'. is that right? There are a ton of good bts guides out there on the Internet and entire forums dedicated to their care. Not to be a dick, but have you really done your homework on this? While they aren’t hard to take care of, bts’s aren’t exactly cheap and there’s a lot that can go wrong if their environment and diet aren’t carefully maintained (obesity, bone/metabolic issues, lost toes and skin/shedding problems, etc). Your recent post history of “i want an ackie monitor...im getting an ackie once I graduate the lady im buying it from says a 40gal breeder is a good size tank is that true?...I don’t think I can afford a big enclosure for a monitor lizard where can I find good cages online?....my parents said no ackie I think I’m going to get a skink or a ball python instead you can feed a skink dog food with some veggies right?” doesn’t really inspire a lot of confidence in me, a stranger on the Internet, and it kinda raises some eyebrows. I assume the best intentions from you but it honestly sounds like you’re more interested in having a large scaly reptile that you can carry around than you are in providing a good environment for an animal that should live for a long time and that deserves and requires a knowledgeable, dedicated keeper in order to thrive. Do you have a herp vet in your area? Are you/your parents prepared to shell out big bucks for a visit if your potato lizard gets a bowel impaction or a skin disease or whatever? Do you have somebody that you trust to take care of it when you go on vacation? You mention that you have a bunch of frogs at the moment. There’s nothing wrong with starting out with something smaller for a bit and working up to a skink or medium snake down the road.
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Jun 30, 2018 22:00
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Dapper_Swindler posted:sorry i sound like a weirdo No need to apologize, if anything I’m sorry if I came off too grumpy. I just want to make sure that you and your family have all of the right information and are prepared to give a big lizard or snake a good home. I grew up keeping reptiles and have seen enough poo poo to know how important it is to have owners/parents/spouses/providers/landlords/whatever who are truly on board and informed (and therefore willing and able to spend money/time/care or obtain/build/find a piece of specialized equipment/housing/food/medicine/whatever when necessary) vs those that aren’t. That goes for all pets but reptiles are especially prone to both needing really specific poo poo to be healthy and surviving for a long time in bad shape. It creates a bad combination where animals can be improperly or incompetently kept for a long time before dying. I was sort of put off because skinks are expensive and I’d maybe say “medium skill level” in terms of ownership and ball pythons are super cheap and, for better or worse, often considered “babbys first big snek” (I don’t agree and I think it leads to a lot of poorly-cared for snakes owned by people who shouldn’t have them) so I don’t usually see the two in a cross-shopping post. A lot of keepers have both animals and they’re great in their own ways but their needs and habits are quite different. There’s nothing wrong with smaller or easier reptiles- they act just like their larger counterparts and their size and cost make it more feasible to have multiples or several enclosures or even mess around with breeding in the near term. Leopard geckos are excellent and charismatic and come in tons of lovely morphs for way way less than a bts. If you want something that looks dope and is super easy to feed (although not super handleable- not that leopards should really be picked up a ton since they can’t climb- and are therefore somewhat clumsy and fragile- and their skin’s quite soft) crested and gargoyle geckos eat powdered food. If you’re still considering a ball python, it’s honestly going to be easier to keep than a skink in a lot of ways- although I hope your parents are ok with keeping mice in the freezer.
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Jul 1, 2018 04:36
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^^Hear hear. One of the various problems I have with the label of “easy” vs “tough” reptiles as a biologist is that it creates this utterly false idea that we know everything there is to know about how to properly care for a lot of these animals, when the truth is that the modern reptile hobby is maybe 60-70 years old at best and a lot of the mainstays are still being wild caught or imported in some capacity, and can live for a really long time in habitats that aren’t entirely known- or in captive conditions that aren’t exactly optimal. Like, nobody really knows what a lot of herps do when they hibernate in the wild or how their pathogens and parasites spread. Herp keeping is relatively young and actively evolving (like saltwater tank keeping) and some of the things that were considered best practices 10-20 years ago (or are still found in books available in pet shops and libraries) can be considered scrub-level mistakes today. Like when I was a kid, nobody said jack poo poo about female aquatic turtles needing nest box access even if they’re kept alone (they gotta pass those unfertilized eggs somehow, but the assumption was that they’d just be absorbed)- and then cue a bunch of turtles getting a decade older and dying under mysterious circumstances (becoming egg bound) for the hobby to move forward a bunch. I have two eastern painted turtles- and have fostered more in the past- which are native and “easy” and nobody thinks twice about keeping and they’re actually a ton of work to keep properly healthy and happy. The two I got had shellrot and one had a bad abscess on her head that took all of four months to heal up but they’re doing great now. Kappa’s not old enough to be passing eggs yet but I’m already thinking about what enclosure 2.0 will have to look like. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 03:26
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Zamboni_Rodeo posted:Went to the pet store today to pick up some crickets and saw the most gorgeous chameleon. Lookit dem markings! Poor guy. He ended up in a pet store and will probably be bought by someone who has no business keeping a chameleon.
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Jul 15, 2018 20:00
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Owlbear Camus posted:Adorable scaleghetti. There are a ton of web tutorials and YouTube vids showing people making backdrops/elevation at all levels of complexity and effort out of spray insulation and/or styrofoam. Exo Terra also sells relatively cheap (<$20-30 depending on size) premade foam background panels on Amazon with different environmental features/colors/textures that are meant to be easily modified/combined and there are guides out there for turning those into showier pieces as well. Also ZooMed makes some cork tiles that may be better if your beardie is the sort to tear up styrofoam. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Aug 23, 2018 |
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Aug 23, 2018 01:18
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Owlbear Camus posted:One of my thoughts when I agreed to adopt them is I didn't want another cat, let alone a dog, to take care of given my lifestyle of commuting and doing the 9-5 grind... but I was also getting the impression Mewgene Debs was lonely and bored during the day while I was away. Careful. A cat will happily eat a lizard if given the chance.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:40
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Dapper_Swindler posted:well, i am getting BTS(yearling Iriana Jaya) on tuesday or thursday. I have all the info i need but my only question is how do i keep the humidity up. everything says uses cypris bedding and moss interior hides and just use a mist bottle. is that correct? Yup. Get a decent hygrometer and do a manual misting every day or so when you do your other routine poo poo. If you decide that you want an electronic mister down the road there are lots of options.
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Aug 26, 2018 02:20
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Dapper_Swindler posted:also manual or digital for hygrometer. Whatever is the most accurate/easy to use/durable/aesthetic within your budget. I currently have two aquatic turtles and that’s it so I’m out of the loop as far as specific gear recommendations for terrestrial herps are concerned. I’m sure there are plenty of easily accessible opinions and recommendations though. Also, we talked ITT in the past about good herp youtubers/educators. Don’t be afraid of shooting somebody like Dan Carter or Clint an email/tweet/PM asking for tips or gear recs. I think both of those dudes have very happy skinks. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Aug 26, 2018 |
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Aug 26, 2018 21:17
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Dapper_Swindler posted:the beardies don't seem that dumb. arnt they decently smart for animals. Unless you’re talking monitor lizards most reptiles are quite a bit dumber than the rodents that are raised as reptile chow.
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Aug 31, 2018 07:50
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Owlbear Camus posted:Whenever I pick up their crickets I see all the interesting models of beardie and I kind of wish my beardies were the smoother, cuter less pointy-pokey morphs, but I love them all the same as their adoptive lizard dad. This is the moment. Yes, lean into it. This where you pick up a metal shelving unit and start adding enclosures. This is where it goes from being some pets you adopted to a goddamn lifestyle.
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Sep 1, 2018 18:07
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Owlbear Camus posted:I am fighting to be "a guy who owns a couple lizards" instead of "a lizard guy" That’s a chump game and you know it. https://youtu.be/qKYQNtF11eg quote:My admittedly morbid thought was when I start over in 9 years or however much longer these guys last I'll get a different morph or two to take over in the enclosure. Maybe it will be haunted by lizard ghosts of the previous generation. This is why you get a second enclosure with differently aged animals (and/or different species altogether). Your heart can never be empty if you fill it with Maybe try something with similar (though much smaller) needs, like leopard geckos? They are dead cheap for many lovely morphs, they don’t need much, if any, vertical space (and all of it should be flat and easy for their clumsy asses to navigate), and they eat a comparatively tiny number of feeders and have fat tails that make them hardy if you travel briefly. Maybe you wanna try something with different and more compact environmental needs like crested geckos (they eat powder/cup food) or dart frogs. You won’t be a ‘lizard guy’ until you have either more than 3 species, or a rackful of enclosures, in my mind. Having 2 different morphs of beardie in 2+ enclosures isn’t weird or much of an outlay from the initial investment you make for two. Alternatively you can avoid being a lizard guy by getting a tortoise instead. Something small can be very happy in a tortoise table/tortoise box. Or maybe a snake (I don’t think you want a snek). Hell you may end up with two enclosures out of the two lizards that you already have down the road anyway. Be aware that some beardies become quite territorial/bad roommates when they reach adulthood. He may also become tough to be with/highly persistent in wanting to breed- and, therefore, stressful for her. You may end up having to separate them as they age. I recently had to separate my painted turtles because the larger male started attacking/maybe trying to initiate courtship with? the smaller unsexed one (female I think, in which case she’s way too young as grown adult females should be larger than males. Alternatively, it could be simply territory aggression- in either case they can’t share an enclosure) who wanted none of it.
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Sep 2, 2018 23:02
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Cowslips Warren posted:You diversify. Who do you live with?
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Sep 3, 2018 01:02
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Cowslips Warren posted:I take care of my mom. And a house of animals, about half of which are hers. Like the one with the “test drive” terrier from Craigslist in the House Rabbit Thread a few weeks back?
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Sep 3, 2018 01:47
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Cowslips Warren posted:I. Do I want to know? Start reading from here. It goes on for a while, so you might want to grab some snacks  Yossarian-22 posted:Gf owns two pet bunnies and we're thinking of bringing home an Australian terrier, which are notorious for sometimes hunting "pest"-like animals. Thoughts?
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Sep 4, 2018 06:21
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Khisanth Magus posted:Just had to share the two baby Rosy boas that arrived today. They are adorable little things. They join my wife's collection of snakes, which at this point consists of 2 bull snakes, 2 corn snakes, a king snake, 2 pine snakes, and one older Rosy we rescued. I feel like we should have a “post your setup” thread because I’m super curious about that.
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Sep 6, 2018 04:04
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HungryMedusa posted:I feed all of my snakes in the enclosure. I think the idea is that it is less stressful. I have just always done it in the enclosure, mostly on aspen and never had a problem. Once in a while a snake might have a wood chip stick to the prey, but more often than not, it falls off during the swallowing process. The herp community in general is all for feeding less often than in the past and in the enclosure now. Aquatic turtles poop so much that a lot of people recommend feeding in a separate enclosure to cut down on soiling the water with food and poop. But a lot of people also say that doing so interferes with their natural feeding and foraging behavior (eat a bit, bask a bit, eat some more, maybe poop, eat again). I honestly haven’t come to a conclusion on that myself yet, but if you’re doing it right you want the biggest, baddest, most seemingly-overpowered-on-paper filter you can afford. Which is to say that the vast majority of people with aquatic turtles aren’t doing it right and it pisses me off that supposedly responsible brands like ZooMed still market useless “turtle filters” to people who don’t know any better. If they aren’t remotely adequate for fish they probably aren’t going to do jack poo poo for a turtle except move dirty water around. Khisanth Magus posted:Our setups very widely between snakes. They are all bioactive setups to minimize how much cleaning we have to do. We have snakes enclosures ranging from anything from one of those petco display tanks they keep ferrets in(we got it for free) which houses the 6' Bull snake, the slightly smaller female bull snake is in a custom built 3' x 6' cage. The rest are in assorted size aquariums, ranging from a 75 on down. Now I’m even more curious.
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Sep 6, 2018 05:48
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Owlbear Camus posted:Fuuuuck.  Good luck dude... I lost my very first herp (Asian box turtle) that way as a kid. Like a lot of suburban New England homes, my parents' house is on the edge of some woods. I was cleaning out her enclosure in the backyard the afternoon before we were going to take an international trip to visit family. Normally, I could keep track of her as she tromped around in the grass but on this particular occassion she just booked. Probably ended up burying herself in some leaf litter once she made it off the lawn. My parents and I searched for like 5 hours in the darkening night but we never found her and we had to fly out early the next morning  .
trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 18:19
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Owlbear Camus posted:I made the mistake of letting my kids tag along to the Lizard Store when I was picking up some chirpi bois for the beardies the other day. So you found the other one after the great escape? Hurray! Small torts are a commitment but they’re relatively low maintenance, I’d wait until kids are older (at least 10) tho. A tortoise table can be constructed fairly attractively and affordably. Just also don’t get anything bigger than a cherryhead. I’m planning on getting a tort after I finish this Masters and move. I also got the two eastern painted turts that got kinda dumped on me last year tho. The ones I had to separate. 
trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Oct 13, 2018 |
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Oct 13, 2018 01:12
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Cowslips Warren posted:I have had leopard tortoises for....30 years now? Close to. We still have the breeding pair we got when I was a kid, and they were imported from loving Africa, so yeah. For indoor living, you can totally do a Russian tortoise (they stay small). For outside, and they will need a heated winter hut (or live inside depending on where you are) I always vote leopards for warmer states, and something like redfoots for cooler or more humid ones. For those who listen to podcasts, one of the recent eps of Judge John Hodgman has some dope tortoise action. It’s the Sept 5 ep, “Don’t Call the Next Witness”. Highly recommended 10/10.
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Oct 13, 2018 18:53
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Guys my eastern paints have been hunger striking for like 3 weeks. I’ve been drydocking them daily under a UVB bulb and they seem to perk up but they’re still refusing to eat.
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Oct 29, 2018 05:56
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Zamboni Rodeo posted:Elmore’s idea of being a mighty hunter is to park his fat little rear end in front of the cricket box and wait for the crickets to come out through the opening. He’s either very lazy or very clever; I’ve not decided which. is both ¿porque no los dos?
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Dec 9, 2018 03:09
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Viperidae posted:I have a new friend What kind of lizard is that? So handsome. So regal.
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Dec 27, 2018 21:35
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Viperidae posted:That is an Ackie monitor. He is a year and a half old. That’s an Ackie? I figured he was a monitor but I would not have pegged him for an Ackie. He’s gorgeous.
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Dec 27, 2018 21:49
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it’s ok reptiles can’t conceptualize the idea of gift giving anyway
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Feb 19, 2019 15:14
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I know that you already know this but any herp aside from maybe a really hungry tegu is gonna be happier being looked at than handled, but beardies are a standby for a reason. You can’t really go wrong with them. BTSs are also a great, albeit more expensive, option. You trade a little bit of personality/activity and a higher cost for a larger, more sedate, more “handleable” lizard. Also snakes like pythons or boas can be good for what you seem to want. If you really want interactivity and personality and behavioral complexity, nothing beats mammals though. Something like a bonded pair of rats or guinea pigs (or rabbits, but then you’re signing up for way more space/food/fuzz requirements) will take up as much space as some big lizards and should be substantially more allergy friendly than a cat or dog if you keep them clean.
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Feb 21, 2019 23:08
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Herps can reek, my dude. But I hear you Another good option for you might be a tortoise? There are some excellent species that are endemic to Eurasia and it’s fun to have them walk around and eat treats and stuff. The cool thing about herps is that it’s not unreasonable to have a few different ones if you can take care of their space and time needs.
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Feb 22, 2019 00:02
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crabrock posted:Our bearded dragon is potty trained and will only poop in his bath. Then it's just dump it in the toilet and flush, never smell that poo poo and since we bathe him every other day or so he never stinks. Wait, does he poop every other day? What happens when y’all are away and watching him on webcam?
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Feb 22, 2019 04:16
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Bollock Monkey posted:Aren't tortoises pretty hard work? I thought they were one of the 'advanced' herps. Maybe like a sulcata or something exotic (or big) with dietary/nutritional sensitivities. A Russian or Greek tortoise is about as easy as a herp gets, you just need to make sure that you’re prepared to tap your heirs to take care of it if you do a good job.
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Feb 22, 2019 12:47
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Slugworth posted:Turtles are absolutely hard work, tortoises less so. Holy poo poo this
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Feb 22, 2019 14:56
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Bollock Monkey posted:Ahh, makes sense. I'd just had shell baby = difficult in my head. Torts are great, they need UVB. If you’re in the right climate for them they can live outdoors or in an enclosure on a balcony (I’d put a chickenwire/screen over them bc predatory birds)
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Feb 22, 2019 18:43
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Bollock Monkey posted:I'm in a flat in England so no chance of that working! Then they can live in a tortoise table? Really I meant like part of the year
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Feb 22, 2019 19:16
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So there’s apparently a bit of controversy happening within the herping/herp breeding/herp YouTube/herp internet scene right now regarding the ethics of breeding and selling certain ball python morphs. Phoneposting so I’m not gonna post anything exhaustive or any links (it’s easy enough to find them) but the TLDR is that the big herping group in the UK decided to ban the sale of “spider” morph snakes at their sanctioned expos/shows due to the known association of said morph with a group of neurological symptoms that hobbyists have dubbed the “spider wobble.” This doesn’t mean that the sale of these snakes is affected in any legal sense but it does signal a push from within the hobby to start really policing unsafe breeding practices. It’s worth noting that a few other morphs are associated with similar issues and being discussed heavily in the hobby but this action specifically targets “spider gene” snakes and their breeders. As might be expected, some well established snake breeders/sellers who happen to sell spider morph snakes didn’t take kindly to that. Cue responses from guys like Brian Barczyck, who, as several herp youtubers have pointed out, has basically been giving a masterclass in argumentative fallacy over the last few days since the policy change was announced and has so far come out looking pretty badly in a lot of people’s eyes. Anyway, I figured it might be of thread interest and wanted to bring the topic up for discussion
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Mar 12, 2019 20:57
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