Reptile & Amphibian Forums

2 weeks ago my HL was doing just fine and was very fat he ate almost 20-30 ants a day. Now he just runs away from them and is getting skinnier, could he be impacted or could it be that the harvester ants that are not the type of ants from his original local are scaring him?

What makes you think he is impacted with sand? HLs purposely ingest sand perhaps as a digestive aid. Their are many factors that will cause a HL to stop eating. If the individual ate 20 to 30 of these ants before, they aren't the problem. During the reproductive season males become extremely restless and stop feeding. Heat stress will cause HLs to stop feeding. Overcrowding can also cause HLs to stop feeding. Try isolating the individual with little disturbance in a large enclosure with a 70 F to 110 F temp gradient. Make sure your using a mercury vapor reptile heat lamp. Check the temps after the light has been on for 4 hours to make sure the heat isn't building up. Throw in a variety of prey items and see what happens. 9 times out of 10 its stress related, healthy HLs eat almost anything.

Well when I first moved here (Sac) from Utah in January. We had an Anole and our HL they lived for 5 months in the same cage and stayed on different sides, I've even heard that they are closely rlated. We put them into a smaller cage to bring them out here. before we left Utah The anole took it upon himself to bite the HL. "Horny" had a huge chunk taken out of his leg. Well we couldn't feed him because his food would just eat at his leg (or try anyway). He couldn't even move and the only way we could tell he was a live was that he would blink at us. After a week we got him into a vet that specialized in exotics(they were all out of town). He made an excellent recovery after being administered a number of shots. But the vet told me I should feed him outside of the cage so he doesn't get impacted with sand that's all. I did'nt listen of course I've noticed him eating sand on many occasions. But he is just extra scared of the harvester ants and almost seems to choke them down. The place where we captured him from is in west central Utah and if you've ever been there you had to notice all the red ant hills (fire ants is what I was told they were). I don't think they sting, just pinch. Any way it's a problem if he won't eat ants because he ate about 10 medium crickets and 40 small ones in the past 3 days, from what I understand he needs ants to live. He only eats one or two in a sitting (but still doesn't like it).