Hey, I usually post on the boa, rainbow boa, and blood python forums, I mainly keep boas and pythons with just a few colubrids. Well yesterday at work my supervisor came up to me and said there’s a big lizard on the said of our building by the door on the outside if I wanted to see it, well I live in south east Texas so I wasn’t prepared to see a Tokay hanging out on the side of our aluminum building. Being a non native species, it must have had to of gotten away from someone, I felt it’s my responsibility as a responsible keeper/hobbyist to catch it and not let it just roam the North Houston area.

Give you guys a little background on the weather lately, it’s been in the 100’s and yesterday we had a heat index of 110F, and this poor thing was on the metal building so it must have been even hotter. It was pretty easy to catch so I figured the heat and lower humidity it must be dehydrated and over heated so I put it in a small Rubbermaid and put it inside the office which is about 75F until I went home. It’s about 8” or so, and does not have very noticeable pores on the V shape like males do so I assume it’s a female. When I got home I set up a cage for it.

This is how I set it up, it’s a 29g tall aquarium with over 75% of the screen covered by plastic to help hold in humidity, yes I know screens are horrible but it’s all I had as I wasn’t expecting to be bringing home a new little pet. Coconut husk for a substrate, a shallow water dish about an inch deep, large/med half long hides set up vertical a small fake vine, the foam background from an exo terra cage on 1 side that goes about half way up, and a heating pad under the tank on one side of the cage.

After I set this up I persuaded the tokay into the cage with a small snake hook, I didn’t want to pick it up as I didn’t want to stress it even more, and sprayed the cage down heavily with the tokay in it to help get it hydrated, which it didn’t move when I did that barely at all and stayed in the same spot till I went to sleep and turned real dark. This morning I went to spray it again which is was now on the fake vine. And darted between the log hides soon as I came near the cage and her color was lighter again (I was thrilled that it seemed to be doing better.)

My house is about 78-79F in the day time about mid wall and 73-74F at night, with the heating pad under the cage I assume this will be adequate, am I correct with this?

Does it sound like I have the cage set up properly? From what I’ve read I’m pretty sure I do but from keepers experience I feel is always better then something you just find on the internet.

Feeding how often do you feed these? I know it says a variety of insects, they listed several, and dust their food with a multi vitamin every other feeding but they all failed to mention how often to feed. Also do you recommend a multi vitamin, which I don’t have, or would a calcium supplement work? I have this.

Any other tips or thoughts feel free to ask, and thanks in advance for answering some of my questions

Zack

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Zack Greens Reptiles

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