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OneTwentySix
Nov 5, 2007

fun
FUN
FUN


That drat Satyr posted:

A friend's kids caught this little guy and they seem to be intent on keeping him. Any help with an ID? They're in Minnesota.



Leperflesh beat me to it, and everything he says is correct.

Minnesota is really weird, though - finding tigers in Wisconsin is really tough - I know a single place that has them, though they're supposed to be more common in the southern part of the state. Tigers are generally pretty uncommon and hard to find elsewhere, too. Spotted salamanders, on the other hand, are one of the most common species in the eastern United States - if you found an Ambystomid, it's almost always a spotted. For whatever reason, spotted salamanders have only recently been found in Minnesota and would be a really big deal - edge of their range kinda thing.

A variety of insects is okay, or you could just feed earthworms - they're really balanced as far as their nutritional needs go. Anything else you might feed (mealworms and crickets are the most common food items) aren't anywhere near as good for them.

Here's a care sheet: http://www.caudata.org/cc/species/Ambystoma/A_tigrinum.shtml

Looks like he's a metamorph. Most of the time, adults are underground and you only tend to find them with digging-related projects. There should be a nearby pond or wetland - in the spring, when you get the first warm rain (there will typically be snow on the ground still), go out at night with a flashlight and you could see a bunch of adults, it's really neat. Drive slowly near wetlands and you can find them crossing the road, etc. - it's a lot of fun!

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Knormal
Nov 11, 2001

It should be noted tiger salamanders will be pretty bad pets for kids. Like OneTwentySix said they'll spend most of their time sitting inactive in their burrow, and like all amphibians you can't handle them too much because human skin oils will dry out their skin. Basically they'll be looking at a terrarium of moist dirt most of the time.

Yoshimo
Oct 5, 2003

Fleet of foot, and all that!
So our poor little Corn Snake appears to have something weird going up with him; he's acting more skittish than usual when we try to handle him, and when we do handle him, when he tries to slither between my fingers, about 3 quarters of the way down his body (ie. nearest the tail) makes a sort of clicking, almost like when you crack your knuckles. He doesn't seem to have any bother moving around, so I'm just wondering if this poor little mite could have serious issues. Anyone got any guesses?

OneTwentySix
Nov 5, 2007

fun
FUN
FUN


Knormal posted:

It should be noted tiger salamanders will be pretty bad pets for kids. Like OneTwentySix said they'll spend most of their time sitting inactive in their burrow, and like all amphibians you can't handle them too much because human skin oils will dry out their skin. Basically they'll be looking at a terrarium of moist dirt most of the time.

Yeah, this is true. I thought of mentioning something, like how he'd be better in the wild, but in the end, one metamorph is pretty insignificant - much better choice than an adult anyhow. But yeah, they like to hide. You can get around this with good terrarium design - you can make PVC pipe tunnels by cutting a pipe in half and siliconing it to the glass, so you can see him in his burrow. Sometimes, they'll stay near the surface under a cover object in captivity. Or you can dig him up to feed him and they'd see him then - you can train them to hand feed, but be careful he doesn't miss since they can draw blood (rarely - most bites are not remotely painful and they're always misses over food and never aggressive/defensive bites).

Cowslips Warren
Oct 29, 2005

What use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?

Grimey Drawer
Baby snakes go good.....but only one has shed. Oddly enough one who hasn't (named hellsing for now, his dad is Dracula and mom Luna.) has eaten!

snake and bake
Feb 23, 2005

:theroni:

Cowslips Warren posted:

Baby snakes go good.....but only one has shed. Oddly enough one who hasn't (named hellsing for now, his dad is Dracula and mom Luna.) has eaten!

I had a clutch of ball pythons hatch at the end of June, and I still have 5/6 of them. I found it interesting that they all eat on the same schedule, but they shed (and grow) at different rates.

Cowslips Warren
Oct 29, 2005

What use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?

Grimey Drawer
Welp, the only one to have eaten is a crazy bitch, going after fingers and the like. Renamed to Tuco. The rest of the Breaking Bad snakelings have not yet eaten. Time to scent the food. Thinking of using a gerbil?

They show interest in mice fuzzies but never strike.

Cowslips Warren
Oct 29, 2005

What use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?

Grimey Drawer
Okay, this is a bit out of left field. An acquaintance of mine hit me up a few days ago because he will be travelling all next year due to his new position at work, and he's offered me his cherry head and red foot tortoise babies. Here's the issue: the cherry head has shell rot. I haven't seen photos yet but I know that can be common if, you know, people treat their high humidity animals like toilets. I'm debating about taking them, mostly because he'll give me all the supplies with it, and my spare room has lots of fish tanks, so it's a bit more humid than the rest of the house. But on the other hand, it's a sick animal and I have no idea how bad off it is.

Tuco and now Saul Goodman have eaten. Saul likes large pinkie mice. No idea why. Am getting some gerbils (at least 2 or 3, they are social fuckers even if I only need them as scenters) this week. I hope that kicks the other babies into eating gear.

uglynoodles
May 28, 2009


@Cowslips Warren: If you think you can do it some good, and you have the space and time to care for it, why not?
If it ends up being too far gone, you at least can know you tried to help the poor thing feel a little better, a little more secure, before popping off to oblivion.

I've named my leo Goji. After Gojira, King of Monsters, and also those little berries. :newt:
I've been acclimatising her to my presence over time. She has a loving wicked feeding instinct; the drat worms don't even really need to be moving much and she's on them. When she wasn't sure what my hands were, she even had the guts to try out my finger, because BIG THING LOOK WORM AND IS MOVE. BIG THING WORM? It was pretty cute actually, she seemed to figure out I wasn't food after that. Her nip was completely painless and felt like a weak clothespin with a rim made out of sandpaper or something.

Today I stuck my hand in to get her used to me some more, and she came over, had a little smell, then bumped my head like a cat would do and lay down directly underneath it. She let me touch her back, too. :)

Leos :kiddo:

DiverTwig
Jul 23, 2003
I ignore all NWS Tags, my Boss's like porn
This little bundle of adorable came home with me last night. Picked her out a few weeks ago at a herp show, but at that time she'd only eaten once and the breeder said he'd be more comfortable letting her go after she'd eaten a few more times. She ate for the third time this past weekend and I got to pick her up on my way home from work yesterday.

Aperture Priority
May 4, 2009

~~*~~Is Dream~~*~~
:coolfish::3::coolfish:

For the beardie owners: what kind of feeding schedule do you have yours on? Our little girl is around 11 months old and we've been doing insects twice a day since we got her. The problem is that our schedules are changing and it will be very difficult to continue what we've been doing, and feeding schedule advice on the net is all over the place.

Would it be ok to do a once daily insect feeding at this point in her life?

Galactic
Mar 25, 2009

Planetary

Aperture Priority posted:

For the beardie owners: what kind of feeding schedule do you have yours on? Our little girl is around 11 months old and we've been doing insects twice a day since we got her. The problem is that our schedules are changing and it will be very difficult to continue what we've been doing, and feeding schedule advice on the net is all over the place.

Would it be ok to do a once daily insect feeding at this point in her life?

I give Kola greens in the morning and leave them until I get home, when I offer butterworms. At 11 months you should probably introduce more greens like collards or mustards and limit the insects to once a day, or even every other day.

GenericServices
Apr 28, 2010

Aperture Priority posted:

For the beardie owners: what kind of feeding schedule do you have yours on? Our little girl is around 11 months old and we've been doing insects twice a day since we got her. The problem is that our schedules are changing and it will be very difficult to continue what we've been doing, and feeding schedule advice on the net is all over the place.

Would it be ok to do a once daily insect feeding at this point in her life?

You can start cutting back on the insects at this stage, and definitely try to get them eating greens regularly. With my first, I didn't comprehend how petulant she'd be about moving away from her phoenix worms, so I didn't push it too hard. She then effectively refused to eat greens regularly for four years. She'd daintily pluck bits of squash and colorful veggies out of the salad, she'd go digging if I buried them, and if I sliced everything up finely, she'd ignore it. Don't underestimate the patience and stubborn nature of an animal that can periodically sit under a log for two months without eating and barely lose weight. Get them eating greens early!

Gobbeldygook
May 13, 2009
Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

Put this racist on ignore immediately!
I was fantasizing about getting a beardie and looked up the cost of feed. I found this amazing amazon listing. For $26.49, you can mail someone a thousand huge crickets in packaging practically designed for pranking.

quote:

Warning! These crickets are not in any container other than the outside box!

I now have a cricket infestation of my entire house because, assuming as any normal person would that they would be contained in some kind of critter container.

I cut open the outside box and HUNDREDS of crickets jumped out, on me, into my bedroom & the entire house. They are in my underwear drawer, closet, and crawling on my toothbrush. My roommate is always screaming. They drown in our coffee, eat my bread, and are on every wall, and scare the crap out of me by jumping on me while watching scary movies.

And they excrete everywhere!

Why is there no warning or at least logical packaging?

I don't know what to do, I don't want to spray the entire house with insecticide (which the seller should pay for if I did), other than borrow a hundred lizards.

I just hope they don't breed.

Aperture Priority
May 4, 2009

~~*~~Is Dream~~*~~
:coolfish::3::coolfish:

Ugh. I had an order of 1k crickets arrive with a 2 inch hole punched in the mesh (I swear the UPS guy did it on purpose). There were hundreds of them crawling all over my porch.

It was pretty fun watching birds swarm all over them that day though :v:

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

I'm quite happy to pay 12 cents each for "large" (actually about 3/4 inch) crickets at PetSmart weekly because it means I don't have to keep a bin full of crickets around all the time and deal with transferring crickets from a shipping box into the bin and cleaning the dead cricket mulch out of the bin and listening to 500 crickets chirping all day and night. I know I'm paying like four times as much as I would buying them 500 at a time online but the extra money is soooo incredibly worth it. I buy about 50 a week and just portion them out between my firebellied toads and my geckos as soon as I get home and they are generally gone in about three days.

OneTwentySix
Nov 5, 2007

fun
FUN
FUN


Depends on what you're feeding, but if you live in the south, you can culture black soldier flies (phoenix worms) really easily. In the spring, get a 20 gallon rubbermaid tote and cut a hole in the side. Put a layer of dry dog food on the bottom, wet it a bit, and then put the lid on and let it sit outside. Within a few days or weeks, you'll start seeing the black soldier flies showing up (they're kinda bee-shaped, sorta, with white legs). You'll probably get some house flies and other problem bugs, but once the BSFs show up, the other flies stop coming and it'll be just phoenix worms. You can speed up the process by adding phoenix worms to the start, since they'll attract the adults with their pheromones. It's cheap and easy, and relatively pain free. Feed dog food or table scraps, but just remember that you'll want to feed them clean things that'll be entirely eaten if possible - otherwise anything left uneaten will be harder to sift out when collecting - I do this by running a goldfish net through the culture and then rinsing the larvae with a hose.

TescoBag
Dec 2, 2009

Oh god, not again.

I am planning on getting a blue tongue skink. I live in the UK. Anyone know if there are any special requirements for keeping them here? Humidity etc. I have also seen black blue tongue skinks. Anyone know if there is a breeder that offers them in the UK?

Aperture Priority
May 4, 2009

~~*~~Is Dream~~*~~
:coolfish::3::coolfish:

I was OK with feeding my beardie crickets from Petsmart until she ate 63 in one day.

Fluffy Bunnies
Jan 10, 2009

Aperture Priority posted:

I was OK with feeding my beardie crickets from Petsmart until she ate 63 in one day.

Sounds like it's time for that bitch to learn to eat some greens.

Jewigi
Apr 20, 2004

WHat's the best place to buy organic earth worms from? I don't trust Wal-Mart fridgerated worms and the toxins they have in them, probably.

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




Anyone have any experience with, or opinions about, alternative housings for lizards? I was given a bearded dragon this weekend by someone who didn't have the time or money to care for it. I don't really have a lot of money either, but I do have the time. He's about 17in long now and stuck in a little 20gal tank. I've seen some tutorials about making your own tank out of melamine or repurposed furniture, so I thought I might try that over spending $100+ on a decent terrarium, but I don't know if it would be good enough quality compared to a regular glass tank.

uglynoodles
May 28, 2009


Try looking through your local Craigslist/Kijiji/Gumtree, people are foisting big fuckoff used tanks for cheap all the time.

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




I'm sure one will pop up eventually, but most of the ones I've seen are expecting to get what they paid for it. In the meantime I feel bad for the guy being stuck in that little tank.

I saw this at the thrift store and was wondering how easy it would be to repurpose:



I have the tools, but I don't know how it would work for a lizard.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Beardies want big wide flat habitat, rather than narrow tall vertical habitat like a climbing lizard would want. You don't need to have glass all the way around - one side with glass lets you see the lizard, but otherwise being enclosed is OK.

The important aspects of the habitat are that it be healthy (no toxic materials or paints, no sharp edges on the inside), escape-proof, clean, easy to maintain, and allows you to maintain a gradient of appropriate temperatures for the animal. Humidity regulation may also be important depending on your ambient humidity.

If you have reasonable carpentry skills and tools you could definitely construct your own habitat. I built a 3' by 3' by 4' tall enclosure for my chameleon for around 50 bucks in materials a few years back, and it held up OK although it was not attractive to look at.

You'll want a broad, deep, but not necessarily tall box (although vertical space is fine), with vents along the upper sides, but a closed top. You'll need to position a heat lamp and a UV lamp so that they're inside the enclosure or at the very least, not shining through glass (if you must shine your UV light through a transparent pane you will have to locate and purchase special UV-transparent plastic. TAP plastics carries the stuff. It's not cheap and eventually becomes opaque to UV so you have to replace it periodically.)

I dunno about that display cabinet. It could be made to work, assuming it's sturdy and you could lay it on its side, and you can cut vents into it, and you can figure out a way to mount lights, but you might be better off starting with a few pieces of lumber and some screws.

Knormal
Nov 11, 2001

PetCos (how do you pluralize that without it looking weird?) around here are having their $1/gallon terrarium sale again, that's a real good opportunity to pick up a terrarium for super cheap. Unless it's over already, which it might be, since I don't see any reference to it on their website.

Professor Beetus
Apr 12, 2007

They can fight us
But they'll never Beetus

Knormal posted:

PetCos (how do you pluralize that without it looking weird?) around here are having their $1/gallon terrarium sale again, that's a real good opportunity to pick up a terrarium for super cheap. Unless it's over already, which it might be, since I don't see any reference to it on their website.

Ended on the 11th as far as I know but I know there are some wacky regional pricing issues with Petco.

Romeo Reborn
Aug 19, 2014

by Ion Helmet
:nws:

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Big Centipede
Mar 20, 2009

it tingles

Romeo Reborn posted:

:nws:

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

romeo rose got banned in my thread

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




Leperflesh posted:

Beardies want big wide flat habitat, rather than narrow tall vertical habitat like a climbing lizard would want. You don't need to have glass all the way around - one side with glass lets you see the lizard, but otherwise being enclosed is OK.

The important aspects of the habitat are that it be healthy (no toxic materials or paints, no sharp edges on the inside), escape-proof, clean, easy to maintain, and allows you to maintain a gradient of appropriate temperatures for the animal. Humidity regulation may also be important depending on your ambient humidity.

If you have reasonable carpentry skills and tools you could definitely construct your own habitat. I built a 3' by 3' by 4' tall enclosure for my chameleon for around 50 bucks in materials a few years back, and it held up OK although it was not attractive to look at.

You'll want a broad, deep, but not necessarily tall box (although vertical space is fine), with vents along the upper sides, but a closed top. You'll need to position a heat lamp and a UV lamp so that they're inside the enclosure or at the very least, not shining through glass (if you must shine your UV light through a transparent pane you will have to locate and purchase special UV-transparent plastic. TAP plastics carries the stuff. It's not cheap and eventually becomes opaque to UV so you have to replace it periodically.)

I dunno about that display cabinet. It could be made to work, assuming it's sturdy and you could lay it on its side, and you can cut vents into it, and you can figure out a way to mount lights, but you might be better off starting with a few pieces of lumber and some screws.

Thanks. This is probably the best write-up I've seen. I think I really will build a simple wooden box for now.

One more question though I guess: I'm kind of confused about the different kinds of light that I need. I know not to get a compact light for UVB, but earlier in the thread I saw the Exo Terra Solar Glo recommended, and that's just a single bulb that puts off both UVA and UVB. Is that an exception, or are mercury lights a fine replacement for fluorescent? I was originally going to get one of those long fluorescent brackets and a Zoo Med ReptiSun UVB fluorescent bulb in addition to my regular lightbulbs that I already have mounted, but if I can get it all in one bulb then that sounds nicer.

Fitzy Fitz fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Oct 15, 2014

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Be sure if you build a wood enclosure that you seal the wood. You can use polyurethane or similar, and make sure it sits for at least a couple days for all the fumes to finish coming out and the stuff to fully cure. That will let you clean the inside with whatever cleansers you use without ruining the wood, and it'll also keep down splinters etc. It's also a good idea to caulk the joints, for the same reason.

Let's talk about light.

To my mind the lighting in your enclosure has four purposes:
1. Provide sufficient UV exposure for the animal's health
2. Provide sufficient heat for basking
3. Provide a day/night cycle for the animal
4. Allow you and your housemates/guests to enjoy the animal

I greatly prefer to separate heat, UVB, and ordinary lighting as much as practicable. This allows you to regulate each independently. You may find yourself needing to switch to a higher or lower output heat bulb depending on how insulating your enclosure winds up being, and that will be much easier to do if you're not also having to swap UV bulbs at the same time. Combining UVB with the ordinary lighting (for day/night) is much more OK with a beardie, since all-day UVB is what they need anyway. See more on this below.

You can use ceramic "bulbs" to emit heat for basking too, but I found with my chameleon that without the light source, he did not easily locate or use the hot-spot in the cage for basking - his instincts to bask were triggered by visible light, so I had to switch back to a luminescent heat bulb.

For the day/night cycle, you can use a combination of in-tank and room ambient lighting, including possibly a window. This will depend on where you situate the tank in your home, and that room's usage pattern. The key thing is that the lizard should not have to deal with excessive "daylight hours" (e.g., a room that is lit all the time) or "nighttime hours" (a room that is dark all the time). The closer you can get to a reasonable 12/12 split between day/night is better, and some kind of twilight between the two is fine too. A longer day (14 hours) is better than a too-short day.

UV: for most lizards, UVB is the critical thing. It is necessary for Vitamin D production which in turn is necessary for calcium absorption. The best way to get UVB is to let your lizard outside in the sun whenever you can. Obviously you need some kind of outdoor enclosure for this: a temporary cage you can set out on a lawn in a protected area is great. You should always give the animal a hide/shade option when doing this, and of course you'll have to use screen of some kind to let the light in (as mentioned, normal glass and most plastics block UVB). I have also seen people who have leash-trained a beardie taking them for a "walk" in the yard... that's a cool thing to do too. During the summer, 30 minutes a day in the sun may provide most of the UVB they need.

UVA may or may not be important, but fortunately you will get UVA from most bright white lights, without having to buy a special bulb for it. Assuming you're providing ambient lighting OR using an incandescent bulb to provide spot heating, then you are already providing plenty of UVA. Bearded Dragons are desert animals accustomed to basking in the bright sunlight, so they respond best to a bright white basking light. A halogen floodlamp will work well too.

You'll want to set up your heat lamp/daylamp and check temperatures carefully before introducing the animal. ~105 degrees F at the hot point of the basking spot, with a temperature gradient available in the rest of the enclosure - the coolest spot must not be warmer than 85, and something more like 75 or 80 is best. If you can, using a thermostat to switch your heat source on and off will let you hit the right temperature regardless of changes in the temp of the room in which you keep the enclosure.

You can also set up a timed outlet for your daytime/nighttime cycle, which would control ambient lighting, the heat lamp, and the UV light.

For UVB:

A mercury vapor UVB bulb produces both heat and UVB, and they output a lot (which is good, for beardies). You can use it as your primary heat & UVB source. This does mean though that it needs to be on all day, e.g., not on a thermostat switching it off when it gets too hot, which in turn means you need to match the specific heat output of the bulb to exactly where you're mounting & aiming it. If your enclosure is too small you'll overheat the basking spot, too big and you'll underheat it. This type of bulb has to be changed annually even if it hasn't burned out, but my experience has been that they burn out way more often than once a year.

Flourescent bulbs are then my preference for providing UVB. As mentioned by others, avoid the curly type compact flourescent. I suspect that the warnings about them are outdated but I have yet to see someone do comprehensive testing of the CFLs available today to prove that they're safe, so in the meantime, avoid them.

This leaves you with the long-tube type flourescent UVB bulbs. This is my recommendation because you can mount one in the top of your enclosure, have it on all day without adding significantly to heat, and moderate your heat bulb with a thermostat. These bulbs also output UVA, but as mentioned assuming you use a heat lamp and some ambient lighting, the animal will get plenty of UVA. The exact amount of UVB put out is a function of the % output listed times the total luminscence of the bulb, so (for example) a ten watt bulb that claims 15% UVB would output less total UVB than a 20 watt bulb claiming 10% UVB (and wattage is not a perfect indicator for luminescence).

For this reason I recommend a bulb of the largest size Reptisun 10.0 that will conveniently fit in the hood or lid of your enclosure. Anything 12" or over will probably be fine, but by going the full length of the hood/lid, you ensure good exposure everywhere in the tank. These bulbs also provide a pretty good amount of ambient light, so an 18" bulb in your tank may be all the ambient lighting you need for your day/night cycle.

Nightime heating:
You might need nighttime heating if the room in which you keep your enclosure gets very cold at night (say, below 60 or 65 degrees). If you keep your house at a normal comfortable temperature, than this is likely not a concern. If you do have him in a really cold room, then set up a ceramic emitter to provide heat without light at night. As always such a heater should be carefully monitored to be sure it doesn't overheat, such as by using a thermometer, but also make absolutely sure the animal can't come into contact with the heat emitter itself, because it can be burned easily.

I hope this is helpful, and as always someone jump in if I got something wrong! Also Fitzy Fitz feel free to post your plans if you decide to build your own enclosure. :)

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Oct 16, 2014

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




Thanks man, that's a huge help. I went ahead and bought one of those mercury lights because I felt bad for the little guy, and they were having a huge sale on them at the store. Down the line I'll probably upgrade. Right now the temps are 105 under the light, 85 on the close end, and 75 on the far end. I'm a little concerned though because he started shedding just a few hours after I hooked the thing up. It seems like normal shedding as far as I can tell, so maybe the light actually helped him out a little bit? I hope it's not bad! He's been hanging out under the light, so I think he likes it.

I was thinking about building something like this: https://www.beardeddragon.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=171697

It looks nice and sturdy. A lot of the designs I've seen were with cheap materials or didn't include the kind of screens I'd want.

LeafyGreens
May 9, 2009

the elegant cephalopod

Anyone know the best way to transport a crestie to the vet? (Or any other small lizard) All I have at the moment is a large size kritter keeper.

Also has anyone has a gecko drop its tail at the vet? I'm just hoping it isn't too stressful for her...

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Fitzy Fitz posted:

Thanks man, that's a huge help. I went ahead and bought one of those mercury lights because I felt bad for the little guy, and they were having a huge sale on them at the store. Down the line I'll probably upgrade. Right now the temps are 105 under the light, 85 on the close end, and 75 on the far end. I'm a little concerned though because he started shedding just a few hours after I hooked the thing up. It seems like normal shedding as far as I can tell, so maybe the light actually helped him out a little bit? I hope it's not bad! He's been hanging out under the light, so I think he likes it.

I was thinking about building something like this: https://www.beardeddragon.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=171697

It looks nice and sturdy. A lot of the designs I've seen were with cheap materials or didn't include the kind of screens I'd want.

I didn't read it thoroughly but that looks like a decent enough design. The one thing I'd be careful of is the screen - if your bearded dragon rubs its nose on the screen much it can abrade away scales and give them an open wound. It's better to have glass on the front, although with glass you then have to provide ventilation (hence my suggestion to add vents to an enclosure).

If you do use screen, see if you can find a coated screen that won't be as harsh on the animal's face.


Octolady posted:

Anyone know the best way to transport a crestie to the vet? (Or any other small lizard) All I have at the moment is a large size kritter keeper.

Also has anyone has a gecko drop its tail at the vet? I'm just hoping it isn't too stressful for her...

I've had a crestie drop a tail during transportation, because he freaked out. It was when we were moving house, and my wife put his tank into the passenger seat of the car and belted it in. The gecko's tank didn't have anything covering the glass, and he's quite a spazz anyway so he panicked as soon as my wife started driving down the street. I think he could see right out the windows.

So the key thing I think is to cover whatever you transport her in, like with a towel or something, so there's no view outside of all the crazy movement and stuff. Keep the stereo off, drive carefully (no sudden braking or sudden acceleration). Also avoid a temperature shock, so if it's really cold or hot out, start your car and run the heater or A/C until you have a comfortable temperature.

A critter keeper should be fine, though. Put in something easy to hide in like some egg crate or a deep layer of moss or a bunch of paper towels. When you get to the vet, sit her keeper down somewhere and leave it there for five or ten minutes before you open it up, so she has time to calm down after all the movement.

If your gecko does drop her tail, don't panic. It's stressful of course, but she'll survive. Most adult cresties found in the wild are tailless. It will take her a while to get used to jumping without her tail but eventually she'll get the hang of it.

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Oct 18, 2014

LeafyGreens
May 9, 2009

the elegant cephalopod

Yea I'm not too worried about it health wise, but I do really like her tail and I'd be sad if she lost it. Not the end of the world anyway :shobon: she's not an easily frightened gecko unless she's being handled so its more the vet prodding that concerns me

Thanks for the great advice!

Silver Nitrate
Oct 17, 2005

WHAT

Octolady posted:

Anyone know the best way to transport a crestie to the vet? (Or any other small lizard) All I have at the moment is a large size kritter keeper.

Also has anyone has a gecko drop its tail at the vet? I'm just hoping it isn't too stressful for her...

I would just poke some holes in a properly sized tupperware, like what you would ship one in.

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




Leperflesh posted:

I didn't read it thoroughly but that looks like a decent enough design. The one thing I'd be careful of is the screen - if your bearded dragon rubs its nose on the screen much it can abrade away scales and give them an open wound. It's better to have glass on the front, although with glass you then have to provide ventilation (hence my suggestion to add vents to an enclosure).

If you do use screen, see if you can find a coated screen that won't be as harsh on the animal's face.

Ah that makes sense. He didn't mention why he went with screen on the front, but it wouldn't be hard to add glass and vents.

Also, why aren't these supposed to have open tops? I keep seeing things about people wrangling with ways to get lighting inside the enclosure or have it shine properly through the screen. And all the lighting has warnings about not putting it inside an enclosure due to fire hazard. Is it just because there's a chance of things falling in?

Tardigrade
Jul 13, 2012

Half arthropod, half marshmallow, all cute.

Octolady posted:

Anyone know the best way to transport a crestie to the vet? (Or any other small lizard) All I have at the moment is a large size kritter keeper.

Also has anyone has a gecko drop its tail at the vet? I'm just hoping it isn't too stressful for her...

I transported my crestie to the vet in a large open jar, but then it was a short distance, plus he's always been pretty chill and didn't seem too fazed either way. I hope that wasn't a bad thing... The only time I've seen him get visibly upset (as in bitey) was because I had to give him antibiotics for an injury. :smith: He still has his tail though, so I guess it depends on your lizard.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Fitzy Fitz posted:

Ah that makes sense. He didn't mention why he went with screen on the front, but it wouldn't be hard to add glass and vents.

Also, why aren't these supposed to have open tops? I keep seeing things about people wrangling with ways to get lighting inside the enclosure or have it shine properly through the screen. And all the lighting has warnings about not putting it inside an enclosure due to fire hazard. Is it just because there's a chance of things falling in?

An open top may allow your lizard to escape. It will almost definitely allow live crickets to escape, too. And, it may let people or other pets or whatever get in.

You do have to be careful about a lightbulb inside the enclosure, just making sure your bearded dragon cannot reach it/brush against it, and that the temperature of the lizard isn't too high when basking.

What I mean by that is, if you are shining a heat lamp on a spot on (say) a rock, which is 12" from the lamp, and then taking your temp there... well, when the lizard gets on that rock maybe she's now only 8" from the lamp and her skin is getting much hotter than the rock was?

An infrared thermometer is a great way to figure stuff like this out. They're little keyfob-sized doohickies that you just point and push a button and it gives you a temp reading nearly instantly. I got one for like $15 I think.

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uglynoodles
May 28, 2009


Goji crawled onto my hand for the first time last night. :) She's such a lovely, curious little thing.
Good luck with building your own enclosure! I stick to just buying ready-made as I don't have the tools or space. If you can though, you could probably make a really nice custom setup.

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