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i have 2 mtn shrt hl's and when i got up today, one had lightened to an almost white and the other has darkned to almost black. the black one, Spike, is also being very lethargic. What is going on?

What kind of conditions are you keeping them in?
Tank size:
Lighting:
Temp:
Food:
?
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They are in a 20 gal. aquarium with sandstone and calc. substrate sand. they have a 100 watt uv bulb on one side (for basking) and a large hollow log on the other (for shade. They eat a combined 30 small vita-dusted crickets every 7 days ( spread out three times a week)and they take water every 2-3 days from a small fake plant in their cage tthat i spray. They are in my sun room because i was told that natural light is best. The avg day temp is 60-70degrees and 45-50 degrees at night. I have been trying to keep them at the same temps i thing they would be evperiencing in their natural habitat. I was told that they will need to hibernate, but i have no idea how to do that. recently, they have also stopped burrowing at night and begun sleeping on top of their sandstones. If you have any advice, please let me know!

natural sunlight IS the best, if it's unfiltered light.
if the HL's are in a sun-room enclosed in glass, they are not getting any UVB. glass, plastic, and fine wire mesh screen
can attenuate or completely block all UVB rays from the sun.
UVB has a very short wavelength and is blocked easily.
the best way to ensure your lizards get sufficient UVB exposure from the natural source is to keep as little as possible between them and the sun. even on cloudy days though they will still receive some UVB. if in an outside enclosure, something
like chicken wire( to keep out dogs, birds, and cats ) has sufficient gap to allow UVB passage.the UVB is necessary to the matabolism of the calcium into useable D3. otherwise all the calcium you give them is wasted and metabolic bone disease will result.

this 100W UV source you have...how close is it positioned above the substrate?
does it emit any UVB? and at what %?

I would not recommend hibernating your lizards for the first year, at least until you get more experience. they will be fine to skip a year.

as for the color change...HL's adapt suprisingly to thier surounding, also my HL shed earlier this summer and the color difference was striking. he looked like a different animal.
strangely he now looks as though he may be ready to shed again.
I have removed some lose skin that had plugged his snout a few days ago. but you surely would not have observed this overnight in both lizards. the process usually takes at least a few days.

as for the crickets...they are fine, contrary to popular misconception that a HL will necessarily not survive or thrive without a 90% or higher ant diet. recent research in this area confirms this, and, I've maintained a healthy HL for nearly 2 years on a mostly cricket diet, no impacts either. I DO however believe that the more ants you can offer, the better. the HL is used to hunting and dining on dozens of ants a day in the wild.
though they do eat other insect. mostly, they seem to gain and maintain growth easier with the smaller, more numerous, and more often offered ants. but I have seen no evidence that the formic acid in ants is necessary, but to the contrary. I think just that the HL has the ability to prevent the ant sting from being a problem ( unless stung by a mob ). I feed as often as possible ( but at least 3 times a week ), small to med. dusted every other feeding with reptivite supplement & a calcium D3 supplement.

did you mean by a combined "30" small crickets, that each lizard only gets about 15 smalls a week?
if so, this is not sufficient. my HL may eat 15 smalls in one feeding.
I have also heard suggestion of wingless fruit flies being a good way to go, and easy to culture.

fireside3@hotmail.com

Well, Spike, my HL that turned black died a few days ago. Fluffy, my other HL is doing much better now that i have been supplementing with ants. They were only offered 5-7 small dusted crickets every 3 days because they would not eat more than that. After Spike died Fluffy wouldn't eat any crickets at all and became very lethargic. However i started offering him ants and although he only eats about 5 a day right now, he is more active and seems happier. i wondered about hibernation because he has begun sleeping till almost 10 am and is asleep by 5 pm. i thought that would be s sign that he's ready to hibernate, but i could certainly be wrong! He is so small i'm just worried that he hasn't got enough fat stored.

that's strange...tell me more about any unusual conditions, behaviors, etc. before "spike" died. did all generally look well
in the days or weeks before? I ask because the other may be in danger as well...need to make a guess on it to make sure it doesn't happen to the other.

was his appetite ok in the days prior?
do you have a water dish in the habitat so that they might thermoregulate in the water if they want?
if not, then misting alone may not have been sufficient to prevent dehydration.

there could have been too much UV exposure if it is a 100 watt, most UVB lamps don't use that much power, they're as far as I know all flourecent,but this sounds more like a day glow incandesant or a basking spot lamp which would provide NO
UVB, maybe just UVA, which if powerful enough, can cook a herp if too close.

my HL sleeps alot too. always has...it's just their nature when their comfortable and not hunting something. sometimes he sleeps above at night too, on top of the basking rock, cave, or in the pool where the water is sometimes warmer at night than the sand. it's preference. if it's too hot up top, they'll go under, and vise-versa.

make sure you don't over do it with the supplements. don't know if that could have been a contributing factor, but,
hypervitamosis can result and there's all sorts of bad things that can happen with that. vitamin D3 is actually an active ingredient in rat poison, so care must be taken with it.

perhaps "spike" was impacted. appetites going away are one symptom. I've never had this with my HL, but I have with my box turtle. I gave her a couple very small drops of Milk of Magnesia
on her meal and she was all freed up in a few hours (it's mostly saline, and stimulant free ).

still...forget about the hibernation for now if there is any doubt about the HL's fat reserves or your experience.

hope this helps...I hate to hear about HL's dying.

fireside3@hotmail.com

Well, i have brought Fluffy back inside to prevent hibernation from the temp drop outside. Thanks for the advice! Spike looked well, untill the day before. He got very dark and round(heavily inflated looking) and didn't eat anything. He also fell asleep standing (on his hind legs)up aginst a rock that night. The next morning his color was right again, but he was still fat and just started twitching and sticking his tongue out alot. That was it.

We actually have 2 lights for fluffy, a uva/uvb bulb and a basking light. I don't remember the wattage of the uv bulb, but it is a vita-lite. The basking light is 100 watt but i have a 60 watt also in case the 100 watt gets the temp to high, so i could switch them out.

There is a small water dish in his setup, but it seems only good for drowning crickets! He didn't eat anything yesterday or yet today. He's moving arround and climbing on his log and seems fine, but he's looking a little fat today. I put a few ants in and hopefully he will eat later. I am trying to keep him alive until I can move this comming spring to the area we found them, then i'm going to build them a large outdoor set up in their natural environment. They are such beautiful animals, I really want to observe them and hopefully get them to mate. Which remindes me, how can you tell if they are male or female?

Hey there,

You can generally tell a male HL from a female by looking at the underside tail region. Males have a distinct row of spots on their hind legs called femoral pores, and females, while they sometimes have these pores are not even close to the distinctness that you'd see in a male. Males also have a pair of scales just behind the vent that are enlarged. For your convenience, called post-anal scales. Check back in the forum, May 18th to the "sexing hernandezi" thread. It has a pic of a male that demonstrates what I just told you. Hope this helps.

with kind regards,
-Phil

Thanks for your help everyone!
Sherry

>Well, i have brought Fluffy back inside to prevent hibernation >from the temp drop outside. Thanks for the advice! Spike >looked well, untill the day before. He got very dark and round >heavily inflated looking) and didn't eat anything. He also >fell asleep standing (on his hind legs)up aginst a rock that >night. The next morning his color was right again, but he was >still fat and just started twitching and sticking his tongue >out alot. That was it.

Oh..OK. didn't realize you actually kept them mostly in a habitat open to outdoor environment. yes, then there might have been some behavior preparatory to hibernation you observed.

the actual cause of death at this point I could only continue to speculate. but I think since they had access to an outside area I might have found the best expaination so far. THIS IS DISTURBING AND I ONLY JUST FOUND IT...POISONING FROM EATING FIREFLIES!!!

"Reptiles and amphibians from habitats without the poisonous type of fireflies seem not to know any better," Adler says. "They will eat anything that flies by."

"That's what happened recently at the Philadelphia Zoo with two Pogona (bearded dragon) lizards. When zoo keepers moved the colorful reptiles to an outdoor enclosure to feed on the summer crop of insects, lizards that are native to Australia were killed by the common North American Photinus fireflies. THE LIZARDS' JAWS OPENED IN A WIDE GAPE AS THEY TRIED TO REGURGITATE. THEIR SKIN COLOR CHANGED FROM TAN TO BLACK. AND THEY DIED WITHIN HOURS. When the lizards' stomach contents were sent to the Eisner laboratory at Cornell, researchers found Photinus fireflies among the other ingested insects."

source for this article is @: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/07/990728073414.htm

I'M SORRY...WISHED I HAD FOUND THIS A FEW DAYS SOONER...

probably the most important thing in hibernation of a HL
is to slow the feeding along with the acclimation to fall/winter temps, or, the gradual reduction of the lighting cycles and temperature. you will eventually stop feeding, ensuring that when they do hibernate, no waste is present in the digestive system that could decompose & result in some toxemia...keeping them well hydrated however...but I've been doing this ( HL's ) only going on 3 years, and I skipped hibernation the first year, so you may want to check with others who've done more HL hibernations. I mostly extrapolate from my general experience in other herps.

>We actually have 2 lights for fluffy, a uva/uvb bulb and a >basking light. I don't remember the wattage of the uv bulb, >but it is a vita-lite. The basking light is 100 watt but i >have a 60 watt also in case the 100 watt gets the temp to >high, so i could switch them out.

this sounds good...the UV bulbs degrade in effecient transmissions with time though, within a year or so. there are
UV strength meters avilable to measure the effective transmissions from the light to the surface.

>There is a small water dish in his setup, but it seems only >good for drowning crickets! He didn't eat anything yesterday >or yet today. He's moving arround and climbing on his log and >seems fine, but he's looking a little fat today. I put a few >ants in and hopefully he will eat later. I am trying to keep >him alive until I can move this comming spring to the area we >found them, then i'm going to build them a large outdoor set >up in their natural environment. They are such beautiful >animals, I really want to observe them and hopefully get them >to mate. Which remindes me, how can you tell if they are male >or female?

I have to "disable" the crickets jumping legs. this keeps them out of the pool, and makes the HL catching them easier. He used to stalk them so long he'd nearly give up because they kept jumping away when he got close. HL's don't like to chase down prey much in my experience.
it looks like others have already provided many answers on the sexing, and reference the older posts with good info...as I am actually new to the forum and have learned some things on that too...I have nothing to add.

fireside3@hotmail.com

Fluffy does seem to get discouraged from eating after a cricket or two jumps away. What do you do exactly? Which are their jumping legs? Fluffy is doing well now and I hope to have my harvister ants in tomorrow! He has been eating small crickets since I brought him indoors. Thanks for the info about the fireflies, but as they were in my sun room, I doubt something like that was the cause. I am begining to think it was over-handeling or lack of ants. I held Spike alot because he seemed to enjoy it, but I may have over stimulated him. Fluffy has also begun burrowing again, tonight she(?) is under her log. I looked at her underside but there was no noticable spots or scales. Just white belly. Perhaps she is too young to tell yet. I am begining to think she only hatched this spring, she is 1 5/8 in long and aprox. 2 grams. (my scale isn't very accurate)

Hey Sherry,

I have a question. What species are your HLs? Its a good thing that your HL is sleeping under the log. Often when a lizard sleeps standing against the glass, its a good indicator of a stressed animal. It is trying so hard to get out, that it just falls asleep. This is my opinion and observation, of course, but there may be some scientific study on it. If I find some, I'll let you know. Good luck with Fluffy. oh, BTW, a crickets' jumping legs are the largest and last pair of legs on the thorax. They should reach the length of the abdomen. Hope this helps.

-Phil

I was trying to let you use your imagination, but, what I do is take a pair of scissors and snip off the hind legs. that way they're not too fast to get away.

about the possible cause off death... you're serious??!!

overhandling???

not in a million years, that's a myth...that has gone around for years as a reason for the decline of HL's in Texas...it is simply an urban legend.

the only way I'd consider that a cause:

1. in the case of possible infectious disease transmission between same species or cross species that you handled.

for that reason, I always wash with disinfectant gel before handling;
(a.) another species, or,
(b.) an animal of the same species in a different enclosure.

you want to compartmentalize any hazardous exposure or contamination.

2. in the case the animal was handled roughly by children or adults, and injured.

reptiles do get stressed...but if it contributes to the death of the animal, it's usually in the form of rejecting food. not running around with the tongue out, changing color, and, dying because you handled it too much.

the two symptoms in the article were the EXACT two symptoms you laid out. so strange that you automatically dismiss it as a possibility, and go in favor of some baseless assumption.

I'm not saying it _WAS_ fireflies...but it seems the most likely explaination is some type of toxicosis, possibly even another type of insect. bugs do have a way of getting into homes.
offering insects caught outdoors that may have been exposed to pesticides may also happen, which is why I don't do it unless it's harvester or carpenter ants I gather from a remote location free from human traffic or areas that might
have been sprayed ( such as agricultural areas, golf corses, & residential neighborhoods ).

I'm sorry to be so blunt...but for someone who is so new to this, and has recently had a HL die, you should not be so unilaterally dismissive. you're last HL is going to need much more than mystic deduction to survive.

and it wasn't lack of ants either...geez, you didn't even consider anything I said previously on that. if that were true
there would be a helluva lot more dead HL stories here, and mine would have died _LONG_ ago.

as to the size of your "Fluffy"...I don't know what species your dealing with, but, I am fairly certain you are describing
a _BABY_ HL. a hatchling from this year.

I'm sorry, but, if you do not have a few years experience with other reptiles, I would recommend you turn this lizard over to someone more experienced if you want it to have the best chance at survival. if it were not so close to winter I would recommend releasing it, if it were a wild capture.
it was only due to my previous experience with reptiles, I am certain, that allowed me to keep a healthy HL. sometimes I feared even that experience might not be enough. this is _NOT_
a reptile for beginners.

my HL will sometimes go to sleep standing against the plexiglass as well. but it's not because he's stressed, it's because he can effectively orient his back to the heat source that way.

One thing I have learned about removing crickets legs. If you try to just pull them off you can tear the darn things in half, but if you pinch the jumping legs they just fall off. It must be a survival thing, like a lizard dropping it's tail if caught.
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