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Slugworth posted:How are you controlling water temp? I really, really want an axolotl, but chillers are expensive, and every other option sounds awful. Depending on the temperatures your climate hits you can do a fair bit with just fans and managing the heat of the room overall i.e. opening windows in the cooler times of day, keeping them closed when it's hot etc. We get a few days of high 20s-low 30s Celsius here each summer and whilst the water temperature does rise above what is ideal on those days, it comes back down and is controlled fairly well by a floor fan that we prop up and aim at the surface of the water. e: New page! Here's Max with his face in a plant: 
Bollock Monkey fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Feb 9, 2020 |
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Feb 9, 2020 13:44
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That's not what faceplanting means, you silly underwater thingie.
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Feb 9, 2020 14:11
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This inspired me to look at his baby photos. What a difference five years (well, four and a half I guess) makes!
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Feb 9, 2020 16:45
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I went to the reptile show today and brought home a friend.  Her name is Lady Aberlin!
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Feb 10, 2020 04:16
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my cat is norris posted:I went to the reptile show today and brought home a friend. Squeeeee
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Feb 10, 2020 05:29
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GreenBuckanneer posted:
looks like one of my two. mine just has freckles on her head/face.
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Feb 10, 2020 05:51
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Cowslips Warren posted:Phoenix goon here. AC in the house of course, and in warmer months I have a fan shooting directly on top of the open tank.
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Feb 11, 2020 05:02
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Slugworth posted:How are you controlling water temp? I really, really want an axolotl, but chillers are expensive, and every other option sounds awful. Cowslips Warren posted:Phoenix goon here. AC in the house of course, and in warmer months I have a fan shooting directly on top of the open tank. This is pretty much how we do it here. In Albuquerque it also gets cold as heck at night, so the water usually is on the cold end in the morning and warms up through the day. I wouldn’t say this works for everyone because I’m not an expert, but I’d maybe get a tank first, fill it up and see the temp after a few days? Then you could go from there.
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Feb 11, 2020 06:49
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Slugworth posted:What water temps are you usually sitting at? My house is never (especially in the summer) below say, 68-69 degrees, so even in the winter, I'd be 4-8 degrees hotter than recommended temps. Summer time I'd probably be like 10 degrees above. fingers crossed maybe so far I've just been really lucky, but with the fan directly at the top of the tank in the summer, the axies sit about 75 to 76, as long as the stays under 78 I'm not to worry, I also have Frozen water bottles I use to keep the water cool.
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Feb 11, 2020 16:15
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One of my fat-tailed geckos may be exhibiting tail necrosis, and I’m trying to do what I can to take care of the poor little thing before taking her to a vet. Here’s a picture I was able to snap after giving her a gentle cleaning and taking care of her cage. Does anyone in the great herp thread have suggestions? Thank you so much. https://imgur.com/katd2Xv
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Feb 14, 2020 09:31
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Tuesday: confirmed that my beardie passed away during hibernation despite everything appearing fine. poo poo happens, at least the temperature warmed up enough outside to be able to go bury my first herp in the nearby park. Wound up adopting a rather friendly leopard gecko by that night! When I first met the critter, it was early afternoon and it was wide awake and had the energy to be held, lick everything, and climb all over me. Today (Friday): new buddy still prefers hiding all day in the hide-spot on the hot side of the tank, not really eating or coming out at all. I figure that might be normal for the first week or two in a new place. Re-checking the tank reveals that the heat/light/UV* combo bulb (a ReptiSun, I believe; still to warm to take out but I think it's 160W) I was using for my beardie is getting the warm side to around 96-97.5 F, which according to most LG care material, is exceeding the "94 F maximum." 1) Is that super accurate, or is it acceptable/adaptable if the tank is a few degrees higher like that? Should I get a different combo bulb, lower-powered? This is kind of a premium bulb anyway so I don't mind putting it away in a box for if I get another beardie. Or for backup. 2) Besides their nocturnal nature, if it was too much heat, wouldn't my new pet be sleeping on the cool side under the half-log hide, like it was doing for a bit earlier today? I noticed last night after the combo bulb turned off he ventured out of the hide for a little bit, then went back in the hide after a few minutes to lounge and sleep. 3) In addition to the combo bulb (on a timer) I'm using a ceramic heater on the cool side, running 24/7. As it's winter, my thermostat is turned up so my home is giving my thermometer an outside-tank ambient temperature of about 74 F. Aforementioned care material says the night temperature should be 72-75. I turned off the combo bulb about 30 minutes ago to play it safe, the cool side (with the ceramic heater still on) is now reading about 80.7 (possibly some residual heat from the combo keeping the number high). Should I put the ceramic on a timer too and only have it on at night, or should I not bother with it at all since an LC's heat needs are not a beardie's? 4) Am I overthinking/over-worrying all of this? Agent Escalus fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Feb 14, 2020 |
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Feb 14, 2020 23:47
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my cat is norris posted:I went to the reptile show today and brought home a friend. 
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Feb 15, 2020 00:46
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Agent Escalus posted:Tuesday: confirmed that my beardie passed away during hibernation despite everything appearing fine. poo poo happens, at least the temperature warmed up enough outside to be able to go bury my first herp in the nearby park. Wound up adopting a rather friendly leopard gecko by that night! When I first met the critter, it was early afternoon and it was wide awake and had the energy to be held, lick everything, and climb all over me. Did you really get a new pet the day you buried the old one?
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Feb 15, 2020 00:49
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The circumstances just worked out, put it that way. ...why?
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Feb 15, 2020 00:50
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my beardie passed away suddenly on sunday and it loving sucks i just want to hold him again 
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Feb 15, 2020 06:21
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Agent Escalus posted:The circumstances just worked out, put it that way. Some people think this means that you didn't go through adequate mourning, or that you didn't care enough about your deceased pet, or that this is a sign that you don't value animal lives the way that you should. The reality is that while most of us would probably find it difficult to go out and adopt the same day a beloved pet has died, that's not the case for everyone. It sounds like things just sort of fell into your lap, anyway? It's nice that you were able to bury your beardie outdoors. I'm sorry for the loss of your beardie. Good luck with the gecko.
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Feb 16, 2020 07:55
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crabrock posted:my beardie passed away suddenly on sunday and it loving sucks i just want to hold him again  Hugs!
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Feb 16, 2020 07:56
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Electric Bugaloo posted:Did you really get a new pet the day you buried the old one? Is there something wrong with that? People grieve differently. gently caress, when my sand boa died I didn't cry at all, I broke down her cage and put everything away and acted like poo poo was normal. And then it hit me like a loving truck a few days later, and I had to pull off the road and bawled like a loving baby. I still can't look at sand boas her color, and that was years ago she died. Along those lines, I was deep in mourning when my cat died unexpectedly, and it took loving months to even say her name without getting teared up. Cue me not giving much of a poo poo about my other pets because I was so unhappy (I mean, I fed them, cleaned up their cages etc, but didn't play with them, etc), and then a rescue contacted ours and asked if we could take a hedgehog that was dropped off. They were a farm rescue and didn't have a safe quiet place for a hoggie, and since I had experience, I said sure. I still have Urchin months later, and I like to think my cat sent him my way to help out, because loving hell nothing gets you going like a ball of snuffly spikes that poops all over your shirt because he hates the bath. And likes to get tangled in your hair and cover himself with self-annoited spit from preening your dirty hair out.
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Feb 16, 2020 15:10
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I have never seen a ball python that lifts his head to look around near as much as my kid's pastel. (And it's not the straight upwards "I have respiratory problems" kind, it's literally the "getting a better look around" kind and he only does it while my kid has him out.)
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Feb 16, 2020 17:27
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Agent Escalus posted:
Nah, you're doing the right thing. Definitely drop the temp a bit and see if the behavior changes. e. Another idea is to contact whoever you bought the gecko from and ask what the temp range is they use for their animals, that'll tell you what that particular gecko is used to/acclimated to and you can work from there.
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Feb 17, 2020 09:08
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Lady Aberlin had an ADVENTURE this weekend. The cats knocked over her temporary tank. (I still don't fully know how they did this, but the tank has been moved to a more secure location in the interim.) After a frantic search through the household, we finally found her two rooms over, completely unharmed but absolutely FURIOUS. She was hiding under my pajamas, and had bitten onto them with some pretty intense determination to either eat them or prove to them that neither cats nor pajamas should even THINK of getting on her bad side. It took many minutes to convince her that flannel is not her enemy and to get her back into the safety of her tank. I gave her a pinky after the terror was over. She wouldn't take it until I smushed its head and made its brains all leaky. Feeling very fortunate that Lady Aberlin wasn't hurt, and also enjoying the reminder that baby snakes, while adorable, are savage little things.
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Feb 17, 2020 15:20
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Does anyone have recommendations for enrichment products for lizards?
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Feb 21, 2020 20:53
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Pick posted:Does anyone have recommendations for enrichment products for lizards? Repti-cal and repti-vite seem to be the go-to supplements, and I've used them successfully for a decade. Buy them in separate tubs and then mix both together to dust food items.
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Feb 21, 2020 21:14
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Sorry, I should've been clearer. I do use both of those products currently, I meant items for play or interaction. I have a species of skink that is pretty bright, and I would like for him to have ways to amuse himself if such products exist.
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Feb 21, 2020 21:25
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Oh! I've never seen a lizard play with a toy. I suppose it could happen? I've never owned a skink so I can't really address that part. Live prey, perhaps?
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Feb 21, 2020 21:32
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Pick posted:Sorry, I should've been clearer. I do use both of those products currently, I meant items for play or interaction. I have a species of skink that is pretty bright, and I would like for him to have ways to amuse himself if such products exist. Idk. Do skinks do treat puzzles, of the sort given to rabbits/rats/guinea pigs? I would warrant that sticking a live Dubia in a wooden puzzle is probably inadvisable, but maybe with fruit? Does your skink hunt around a bunch? Would they be food-motivated in that way? Maybe hide fruit pieces in cracks, etc around the enclosure?
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Feb 21, 2020 21:35
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It’s an interesting thought. We tend not to explore this sort of stuff with carnivorous animals for ethics and sanitation/health/safety reasons. Some disorganized Thoughts: Even if a large monitor, or a tiger, would love to spend hours figuring out how to get five chicken carcasses out of a hollowed out log, and may benefit mentally from the activity, we as keepers aren’t about to do that sort of thing. We want to feed them in a spot that’s visible and consistent and safeguarded and sanitary, and we don’t want the animals spending time playing with their food. Fortunately for the tiger, their brains have developed in such a way that non-food toys can be easily incorporated or created. That option doesn’t really exist for the monitor, as far as I’m aware. Mammals and birds grow up with a play-based learning and development style that carnivorous reptiles don’t really have. But it may be that we are missing a rich vein of behavioral data, and that one day the inner lives of these creatures will be revealed. It’s exceedingly difficult to tell with reptiles. And that may also be because we tend to strongly discourage aggressive behavior in reptiles. We don’t want to foster that kind of relationship/association as keepers, whereas with mammals we tend to understand and empathize with their ways a bit more. We may not want to, personally, roughhouse with a tiger but we can grok what “playing” behavior is and what motivates a bored cat. When a tegu starts responding aggressively to a handler or food we tend to treat it as a “stressor” situation. So that leaves us with omnivores/non-grazing herbivores. The ones of these we keep tend to be smart, foraging/scavenging animals. Those do really well with food puzzles, and they can conversely become destructive without that enrichment. And since there’s no disease risk inherent to filling a puzzle toy with peanut butter or apple slices or whatever, they’re super easy to make and very low-risk unless the animal starts ingesting stuff that they shouldn’t. But as far as I know, there aren’t a ton of great behavioral studies on carnivorous herps (or herps in general) that seeks to look at play behavior or environmental enrichment out there.
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Feb 21, 2020 21:57
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Keepers do enrichment for reptiles. I've seen folks take a log and drill holes in it big enough for crickets to hide in, then let tree monitors ambush them or use their claws to dig them out. I've also seen people use mouse bedding to build nests hidden in enclosures for snakes to poke around in. Any sort of novel object is a decent way to add some level of enrichment. Just take a new rock and then remove it after a week or so. For a skink, fruit with mealworms is a good idea since its like finding fruit in the wild to get insects out of
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Feb 22, 2020 01:25
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I got curious and did a bit of digging: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159116302350 quote:Abstract https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327604jaws0902_1 quote:This study investigated the effects of environmentally enriched and standard laboratory housing conditions on behavioral performance in 16 subadult ratsnakes (Elaphe obsoleta) using a split-clutch design. In a problem-solving task, snakes housed in enriched environments (EC) exhibited shorter latencies to the goal hole as compared to snakes housed in standard conditions (SC). In an open field task, EC snakes tended to habituate more quickly than SC snakes with repeated testing. A feeding task did not reveal any significant differences between EC and SC snakes. A discriminant function analysis correctly assigned all snakes to their appropriate housing treatment groups, based on the responses in each of the behavioral tasks. This suggests that each group had a distinct behavioral profile; that is, EC snakes were more behaviorally adaptive than SC snakes. This study demonstrated that housing conditions can affect the behavior of captive snakes and produce improvements in behavior similar to those seen in mammalian enrichment studies. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-007-0109-0 quote:Abstract
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Feb 22, 2020 02:08
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I got some hornworms for my leopard gecko and a few have grown really long. I read you're not supposed to feed anything that's wider than their eyes but is there a length limit to feeder worms?
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Feb 22, 2020 03:13
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Thank you for the quality insights, I hope to post more back soon but am kind of in a rush tonight. I appreciate your help in my quest to make my skink as happy as possible.
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Feb 22, 2020 03:15
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ShadowHawk posted:I got some hornworms for my leopard gecko and a few have grown really long. I read you're not supposed to feed anything that's wider than their eyes but is there a length limit to feeder worms? Cut off their heads/them into pieces if you’re worried. The issue I’ve often heard about is that once a worm- and its jaws- get to be a certain size they can actually inflict a nasty enough bite on your animal. I’ve heard of lizards getting mouth and throat injuries.
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Feb 22, 2020 04:13
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I do know that when I had to strip all my snake cages due to mite treatment a year or two ago, my balls were loving piiiiiiissed. They calmed down once all the branches and poo poo were back in, but drat, for a month I did not want to open the cages for their tempers. Not that I blame them either!
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Feb 22, 2020 06:42
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Electric Bugaloo posted:Cut off their heads/them into pieces if you’re worried. The issue I’ve often heard about is that once a worm- and its jaws- get to be a certain size they can actually inflict a nasty enough bite on your animal. I’ve heard of lizards getting mouth and throat injuries.
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Feb 22, 2020 07:38
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ShadowHawk posted:Won't the leopard gecko not eat them if they're dead (ie not moving)? oh they’ll move
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Feb 22, 2020 14:58
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Cowslips Warren posted:I do know that when I had to strip all my snake cages due to mite treatment a year or two ago, my balls were loving piiiiiiissed. They calmed down once all the branches and poo poo were back in, but drat, for a month I did not want to open the cages for their tempers. Not that I blame them either! “Re: Herp Megathread 3: my balls were loving piiiiiiissed
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Feb 22, 2020 14:59
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Electric Bugaloo posted:Cut off their heads/them into pieces if you’re worried. The issue I’ve often heard about is that once a worm- and its jaws- get to be a certain size they can actually inflict a nasty enough bite on your animal. I’ve heard of lizards getting mouth and throat injuries. There were a bunch of hornworms at petsmart and holy poo poo they're huge. I have a 5y Leo and even those look too big for him.
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Feb 23, 2020 21:14
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Don't suppose this is the right place for a bit of advice regarding a baby beardie? Had her just over two and a half weeks now and getting her to eat any crickets is a massive challenge. She wasn't touching a thing the first few days, then I managed to coax her into eating a few crickets at a time, however it took some real effort and if she missed in her first attempt to catch it she'd just ignore any more crickets. I've put in a feeding bowl (which has sides the cricket can't climb or jump out) to try and aid in catching them which worked for a few days and she ate at least 10-15 crickets over the next day or so, but now again she's just stopped the last two days and hasn't touched a single thing so I'm starting to get a bit more concerned. I also tried tempting her with some wax worms just to see if she'd even go for them, which she did, running all around trying to catch them from me, so there's some sort of appetite there I guess but just not for real food! Any other info I can think of would be that the temperatures are fine, she basks and stays around the hot end, and she is pooping once or twice every day and appears to be hydrating herself. Would be greatly appreciative of any advice, it's a nerve wracking adventure having a baby beardie!  
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Mar 3, 2020 18:00
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bearded dragons are very stubborn assholes. she probably just doesn't want to eat the crickets (esp if she knows she'll get waxworms instead). i don't know how long baby beardies can hunger strike for, but for adult bearded dragons if they don't eat kinda just ignore it and they'll usually eat the next day. You can weigh her daily and then you'll have an idea if she's losing weight or failing to grow at least.
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Mar 4, 2020 04:16
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crabrock posted:bearded dragons are very stubborn assholes. she probably just doesn't want to eat the crickets (esp if she knows she'll get waxworms instead). Thanks for the reply! I'll keep trying, got a box of calci-worms so I'll alternate between them and crickets each attempt and hopefully she'll bite! No more treats though. She started at 13g and hit 17g a few days ago so there's something there.
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Mar 4, 2020 11:21
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