Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My first reptile was a male butterfly agama. After a good deal of searching, I found him a mate (still waiting for her to mature). My son got into the enclosure and tried to pick him up by his tail, breaking the last 2" of his tail off. It did grow back, but now this very nervous lizard is even more nervous. He never comes out of his burrow, and I dig him out on occassions just to check on him. Today I observed that his tail still looks healthy, but he is losing weight . My temps/humidity and size are on target for the pair, and the female is very healty and active. She also tends to gobble most of the food while he's off hiding. I don't suspect any parasites.
My thoughts are to section off the enclosure and give him his own space and put paper on the glass so that he isn't disturbed.
If anyone has a good caresheet, I'd appreciate it. I've pieced mine together from what little onfo is on the web. It seems to work, as they have been healty for 8 months. Also, any info on breeding this species would be great. I'm not sure when they reach sexual maturity, but it seems most agamid lizards take about 2 yrs. I'd like to know if this is true with this species as well.

Thanks to anyone taking the time to read this.

Congrats for keeping them alive for 8 months. Sadly this already is not standard.
First, you should find out, which Leiolepis species you keep. There are slight differences in captive needs.
Second you should know that these lizardas are monogamic and hence its not easy to find a breeding pair by just introducing one female to one male. They should have the choice between several potential mates.
Next is that they need very hot (like for Uromastyx!!!) baskling spots and ambient temps for proper digestion of food (varies between species, but most are 30-50% vegetarian and insectivorous for the rest).
And you must not forget that they do prefer dry basking areas but need long tunnels with moist hidings for hydration regulation.
Most easily this is accomplished by providing a system of tubings extending several feet from the tank and ending in hide boxes with substrates of different humidities.
An alternative is to provide at least 2 ft of clay/dirt/garden soil mix in their tank to allow them to dig tunnels on their own.
But you need a tall tank for this and you easily have a ton of substrate in the big tanks needed for this genus.
Last not least they are very quick lizards and extremely agile runners. Especially for the bipedal circling which belongs to courtship behaviour, but not just for that, one dimension of the tank should be at least 6 to 7 ft, to enable them to run and jump.
If you provide all that and have enough luck to find a pair of lizards which do like each other (for Leiolepis personal aspects are really important!), you can expect eggs.
But there are very few people who ever had breeding success.
Hope that helps.
Do you already know, which species you have?
The pic shows one of my former L. belliana males in NON breeding colouration

Ci@o

Ingo

I'll try to e-mail you or post some pics, I need to take some fresh ones. You'll be interested to know that they mated shortly after introducing the female. Unfortunitly, I did not have the camara set up to catch this. So, I've tackled the big hurdle of finding a pair that will mate. No eggs yet though from the female, I don't think that she is old enough yet. The problem is you just gave me more info than I could get from the net. They are currently housed in a 55 gal. long tank. Temps are good, but I'm still trying to find metods to handle humidity. I feed them mostly insects, and the female downs them like a pig. I'll get some pics up here in abit. Here is an old one shortly after I got my male.

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

Hi,

thats Leioliepis reveesii-and a nice specimen.
Looks very healthy, so you are obviously doing things right.
And they really mated? Thats great, so there is a high chance that they will end up in makeing a true pair.
Keep us posted, if you get eggs!

Ci@o

Ingo

Thats so cool. I am hoping to eventually take on some butterfly agamas as a breeding project. I love agamids, they are wonderful lizards. I currently only have red headeds though. Yes, please let us know if you get babies!
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imaturtlefanwww.enchantingexotics.com