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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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Electric Bugaloo posted:In what world does a giant sedentary yam with legs and a blue tongue need a lot more room than an active monitor lizard? my mom thinks skinks are too big and they need a pretty big cage from i have seen (i have enough space for a 4.5' by 3 or 4 cage, so i could get either.i found a few breeders for ackies and backwater if the breeders are sold out. the issue is skink season is almost over and i am probably not getting anything til august if that. either way, i like both. also agreed. any herp i get is a baby usually. and my frogs(all dumpys) "like" me enough. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 18:36
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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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I recommend checking out this place for specific sellers, but from what I know Backwater is a bit iffy. Parasites, injured animals, weird packaging but hopefully they've improved since then, just going by reviews when I was active there in like 2010. Also wild caught is a weird thing here in Georgia because you're not supposed to own any native species - means no corn snakes. Even captive bred! The catch is that it's fine if you own copperheads and other venomous herps because I guess that's one less venomous thing in the wild?  e: I read up a little on recent Backwater and seems like the general consensus is a No. They're essentially reptile wholesalers so the quality is not good. Judas Horse fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 21:56
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Electric Bugaloo posted:I feel like skinks are way more common in the hobby. Or at least they used to be. 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. Judas Horse posted:I recommend checking out this place for specific sellers, but from what I know Backwater is a bit iffy. Parasites, injured animals, weird packaging but hopefully they've improved since then, just going by reviews when I was active there in like 2010. yeah, that sounds about right. i usualy use facebook groups for breeder searching. i found a great one for an ackie. maybe find one for a skink. not sure yet. plus their is a reptile show every month nearby but i have had mixed results from them. most of the dumpys i got from their were inbred and got genetic poo poo. all my rain frogs died a week or so after. and my tomato frog had a massive seizure and died. i only have 3 frogs left. two dumpys which are healthy and a wild caught grey frog which is living with my gfs.
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Jun 22, 2018 22:12
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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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I used atomic breeder ranch and they were awesome
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Jun 22, 2018 23:02
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Re checking any reptile related business, the BOI isn’t as useful as it was, but people still post there: http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums E:scroll down to see the Board of Inquiry. My phone won’t do the direct link. There are a lot of reviews and it never gets deleted like some of the Facebook drama. HungryMedusa fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 23:18
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Electric Bugaloo posted:If you can ship from the US there are good online frog breeders. Josh’s Frogs for CB dart frogs comes to mind. I keep hearing they are terrible. I want to try raising some dart frogs some time though, but right now i am happy with dumpys.
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Jun 23, 2018 03:20
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If you want darts, I have a few leucs and azureus I'm not actively looking to sell and that should be available until I do make the effort.
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Jun 23, 2018 15:30
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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. Forgot to say something about this,but BTS are very easy to feed. A lot of people just feed them dry dog. They are opportunistic omnivores kinda like ourselves and dogs. Basically if you'd feed it to your dog its probably just as healthy for a skink. Mine doesn't like dry dog food much so I tend to use wet foods "meals" like "roasted chicken and green beans" type stuff. Along with whatever veggies I have lying around and roaches. S/he moves roaches.
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Jun 28, 2018 04:49
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Cless Alvein posted:Forgot to say something about this,but BTS are very easy to feed. A lot of people just feed them dry dog. They are opportunistic omnivores kinda like ourselves and dogs. Basically if you'd feed it to your dog its probably just as healthy for a skink. Mine doesn't like dry dog food much so I tend to use wet foods "meals" like "roasted chicken and green beans" type stuff. Along with whatever veggies I have lying around and roaches. S/he moves roaches. 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.
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Jun 30, 2018 03:03
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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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Electric Bugaloo posted: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. thanks. yeah both have their own thing. I am fine with giving a ball frozen mice and such. but I am leaning toward the skink because they seem more "interactive" and i can feed them dog food and fruits and veggies. skinks seem like a safer bet then ackies and they are cheaper and easier to find. hell i saw a cute baby one yesterday for a reasonable price. but yeah i love clints show. he was the one that got me interested in ackies.
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Jun 30, 2018 06:18
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Electric Bugaloo posted:
UV is a conflicting subject for BTS. Some say it's absolutely necessary, but others say it doesn't matter in the slightest. The latter includes most Australian breeders. So is it necessary? Probably not, but not like it'll hurt to put one in. I know what you mean about zoo. Not sure how it happened, but I started with a cornsnake that became mine wheny sister essentially abandoned it. Now I've got 2 corns, 2 balls, 2 Tokay's, a leopard gecko and a BTS. Its not exactly a herp, but lots of us branch into arachnids, so Ive also got a Columbian Red Leg Tarantula. I'm probably going to add a Hognose if I can be assed to go through the paperwork hoops to own one in this state. That and more spiders or maybe keep scorpions again. Actually now that I think of it 3 of my snakes are the result of my sister buying them then basically handing them to me at some point to take care of.
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Jun 30, 2018 10:43
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i read and heard from different people that you can just feed you skink wet/dry cat/dog food with greens/fruits/veggies. is that true?
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Jun 30, 2018 17:44
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I had a bts, and she was pretty drat chill. I wish I hadn't sold her, but she was only in a 40 breeder and she needed more space. But she largely loved hard boiled eggs (and scrambled), wet cat and dog food (no fish flavors), and mixed greens with the wet food, or cooked chicken, mixed in. She wasn't a fan of mealworms or earthworms at all.
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Jun 30, 2018 18:36
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Cowslips Warren posted:I had a bts, and she was pretty drat chill. I wish I hadn't sold her, but she was only in a 40 breeder and she needed more space. But she largely loved hard boiled eggs (and scrambled), wet cat and dog food (no fish flavors), and mixed greens with the wet food, or cooked chicken, mixed in. She wasn't a fan of mealworms or earthworms at all. i have read they are good on in 4' by 3'. is that right?
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Jun 30, 2018 20:50
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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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Electric Bugaloo posted: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? sorry i sound like a weirdo  . I am relatively new to this.I have been doing research on various reptiles and i may end up starting with something like leopard gecko. But i have always trusted this forum with good info and some breeders/sites/videos/etc say different stuff about care for reptiles. I was set on ackies but after researching them more as well as listing pros and cons, they arnt a good pet for right now. I have always loved skinks since i was little and from the research i have done, they are pretty good beginner lizards. i ask the dumb questions because some of the sites i read give differing advice on care and i wanted this places opinion. anyway sorry for sounding like an immature jack off. also I did find an animal hospital with exotic/reptile care in my college town.
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Jun 30, 2018 22:41
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People get up in arms when it's recommended that they try beginner lizards or reptiles in general. A friend of mine has only ever had a leopard gecko and now wants a fire skink. She has no other experience with any kind of reptiles. BTS tend to be as forgiving (overall) as leopard geckos, but due to their size and diet, I never think of them as beginners. Maybe a stepping stone between leopard geckos and larger skinks or tegus.
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Jul 1, 2018 03:18
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Cowslips Warren posted:People get up in arms when it's recommended that they try beginner lizards or reptiles in general. A friend of mine has only ever had a leopard gecko and now wants a fire skink. She has no other experience with any kind of reptiles. I didn't even know there were larger skinks then BTS. The BTS seems like a good size for me plus as some one with mobility issues because handicaps. plus, they arnt as fast/agile as something as leopard or a beardie. plus feeding it dog food and the right fruits/vegetables seems easier that keeping small feeder insect colonies going(which i already have to do) Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Jul 1, 2018 |
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Jul 1, 2018 03:41
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I didn't even know there were larger skinks then BTS. The BTS seems like a good size for me plus as some one with mobility issues because handicaps. plus, they arnt as fast/agile as something as leopard or a beardie. plus feeding it dog food and the right fruits/vegetables seems easier that keeping small feeder insect colonies going(which i already have to do) I had a colony of leopard geckos for about a decade that ate only mealworms. It was easy as hell to keep breeder colonies going. At the time blab roaches were pretty rare and no one used them for feeders. Once beardies get mature they tend to be a lot more chill, but that applies to most animals. My BTS was chill, but the second she thought she could sneak off, she would. More than once I'd check her outside enclosure to see she'd found another way out and was loose for a day.
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Jul 1, 2018 03:51
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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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Yeah, lots of people have issues with a few bags of frozen rats in the freezer. My snakes eat different sizes, gotta have double the rats 
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Jul 1, 2018 04:46
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Electric Bugaloo posted: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.
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Jul 1, 2018 05:41
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I saw someone taking her snake for a walk today. She walked, the snake was just going for a ride around her neck. It was cute as heck.
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Jul 1, 2018 06:00
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my cat is norris posted:I saw someone taking her snake for a walk today. She walked, the snake was just going for a ride around her neck. It was cute as heck. That’s cute, what kind was it?
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Jul 1, 2018 07:12
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Probably a Ball Python. They're very good at curling around your neck and sitting there forever.
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Jul 1, 2018 08:13
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Cless Alvein posted:Probably a Ball Python. They're very good at curling around your neck and sitting there forever. Probably. My gf has an amazingly friendly one.
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Jul 1, 2018 15:51
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I think it was a boa, but it could've been a ball morph. I didn't get an up close look. Must be loving the heat this week, though.
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Jul 1, 2018 18:09
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Everyone needs a shoulder dragon. I was holding Elmore the other night and he crawled up on my shoulder to sleep. Having a lizard sleeping on you is about like when a cat sits in your lap: you don't want to do anything that will disturb it.
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Jul 1, 2018 18:32
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Zamboni_Rodeo posted:Everyone needs a shoulder dragon. my girlfriends likes to sit on my head. it often goes to sleep.
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Jul 1, 2018 18:40
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I'm sure I've said it before, but I love my ball pythons. They're generally super chill snakes. Plus they're so easy that even with a full-time job, I have no trouble taking care of a breeding colony of about 16 BPs, with periodic increases. I produce 1-2 clutches per year so I've had up to 36 snakes after hatchings. My 2 crested geckos, despite being one of the easiest lizard species to keep, are more work than all of my BPs combined. And those geckos are still a breeze compared to the beardie and leopard geckos I've owned in the past. Some reptile owners enjoy a challenge, and there was a time that I did too, but I guess I'm beyond that point. I like my fat, lazy BPs and cresties. 
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Jul 2, 2018 01:40
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Samila posted:I'm sure I've said it before, but I love my ball pythons. They're generally super chill snakes. Plus they're so easy that even with a full-time job, I have no trouble taking care of a breeding colony of about 16 BPs, with periodic increases. I produce 1-2 clutches per year so I've had up to 36 snakes after hatchings. yeah, maybe i should do more research into Ball pythons. they definitely seem easier to leave at hope if your on a day trip(or take with you).
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Jul 2, 2018 03:14
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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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Gotta take my veiled chameleon to the vet today. Pretty confident he has a respiratory infection. What can I expect as far as survival chance and how can I prevent this in the future? Don't think his cage was overly humid or anything...
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Jul 3, 2018 16:24
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They live about five or six years normally anyway, so prognosis is usually not great but it depends enormously on how early whatever he's got was caught and how sick he is now. When I had mine, my exotic vet found little in the veterinary literature specific to veileds. We did a blood test and had to rely on data for jacksons, which was not particularly helpful for diagnosis. Veileds live in much lower humidity environments than most chameleons - basically in riparian habitats in Yemen, which is a hot, desert country, but with rivers and wetter areas where the chameleons live. I would not assume that his infection was definitely caused by wrong humidity necessarily, but it's possible. Incorrect temperatures could also cause the problem. Do you know if it's a lower tract or upper tract infection? Either way if it's an infection he'll need to be treated with antibiotics. Try to see if your vet understands that a veiled chameleon is quite different from most other chameleons, and don't be afraid to politely help inform them if they're not clear on that. I'll just add that veileds get salt deposits around the nostrils that could be confused for signs of infection. Anyway I'm sorry I don't really have any knowledge specific to respiratory infections in lizards, but I figured anything I could say might be helpful.
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Jul 4, 2018 00:03
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Gordon, my leo, turns 13 in october..so I figured I'd get him a few new things for his tank to spice things up. He's always completely ignored the various moist hides I've given him over the years so I decided I'd try again with a much fancier, ceramic "cave" version. He decides to plop himself next to it instead using it as a thing to lean against in place of walking over to the cool hide, cuz he's stubborn. I figured he was just too lazy to explore and realize this is a hide so I placed him in and he basically had a lizard panic attack from being in an enclosed space for the first time. I don't think I'll ever convince him to use a moist hide. Little dude has his shed routine down to a science at this point and is probably just a tiny masochist. Since he's never really shown much inclination for burrowing or digging and his hides are fairly open in terms of design (half log style) I figured maybe he'd like some more climbing options for the fake arboreal thing they do..so I picked up a hammock.. To his credit, he HAS actually explored it once and hung out in it for a bit..but mostly he just wedges himself under it, sandwiched between it and the top of his warm wide...lil fucker. I'm sure he'll start poopin' in it to spite me soon enough. 
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Jul 4, 2018 10:38
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Mine never wants to use a moist hide either. I just mist her tank a couple times a week. When she's ready to shed, I specifically spray her down. She comes out and soaks up the shower. Haven't had a problem with this system.
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Jul 4, 2018 12:12
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