Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi everyone,

This is a simple question. How often do you clean up the poop in your vivs? My collared babies are poopin a lot! The poop looks normal and healthy. I've been feeding them a lot to put some weight on them. Been letting them eat as much as they want for now.

Here's the question that will make you laugh! How exactly do you do the poop scooping? Any tricks or hints? With my snakes, the poop is big, not unlike a dog's! So I just pick it up with a paper towel. My geckos seem to always leave it discretely in a corner, and I have a plastic spoon that I use as a pooper scooper. My collareds seem to poop here and there and everywhere. I was almost thinking about devising some kind of scooper like I use in my cat's litter box.

Any good hints or tricks of the poop trade would probably make us all laugh, but might be interesting to know.

Thanks,
Hayseed

Depending on the substrate I use a lizard pooper scooper as I have mine on play sand.

Oh my! Is there such a thing as a lizard pooper scooper? I guess I need to know about this! I've never seen one. Would I find this at a pet store? Or order from Foster and Smith?

Thanks!

I use tile in all of my vivs, especially in vivs with young lizards because they can get impacted on playsand. So, I bought a $50 hand held cordless shop vac from Black and Decker, and that thing works great! I just wait until it dries for a few hours and suck it up!

I originally tried doing the scoop thing, but it SO isn't worth it - it was awkward and hard to work around rocks and things. Both my uros and collareds are in nice warm vivs, so by the time I'm doing my daily spot clean, the poops are dried out (usually). I just pick them out by hand. My friend mocks me incessantly for my regular poop-handling.

The cats? Scooper. Definitely.

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Torey
Eugene, Oregon, USA
1.1 Saharan Uros (Joe and Arthur)
3.0 Mali Uros (Spike, Turtle, and Tank)
1.1 Ornate Uros (Scuttlebutt and Shazzbot)
1.1 Collared Lizard (Ripcord and Rorschach)
2.0 Green Anoles (Bowser and Sprocket)
1.1 Chubby Housecats (Roscolux and Jenny)

Well I take all the babies out, and HOOVER. Works a treat, cos they dont have any sand in their tanks. With the adults which DO have sand.... I take em out and use a giant metal sieve, like an overgrown tea strainer. Takes seconds to do the entire tank with a plastic scoop and it gets all the dead skin and random cricket legs out too
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Kel

www.collaredlizards.co.uk

1:1:0 Common Collared Lizards
1:1:0 Auriceps
1:2:0 Desert Collared Lizards
0:1:0 New Mexico Collared Lizard

I mostly just pick it up, too. But I also use a small scoop that was once a kitchen utensil. It is a litle round wire basket thingy with a handle that had been in my kitchen drawer forever. I guess it was meant for straining or sifting small amounts, but that kind of cooking doesn't happen in my kitchen! It is small enough to get into tighter places than the scoops they sell for lizard poop. It comes in handy to sift through the sand. The collareds dig around and sometimes bury poop before I can pick it up.
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Valerie Rae

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.--

God bless the USA