Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey ya'll
i'm ussually in the gecko or chameleon forum but i was watching this show and this guy had some of these beautiful animals. I saw them and before they never really showed me interest but now i am very interested in one or two. So i was wondering if some o f the owners these aniamls on this board could help me out. Or send me i nthe firection of some good care sheets i would greatly appreciate it.
Thank You!

-James

These guys are easy as cake if u get them healthy, setp them up in a large humid enclosure and feed them approproate vegetarian greens. If they get sick or seem sickly, i dont wanna say that you cant save them, but in my experience they decline rapodly and dont repsnd well to treatment. usually you cant hold them cuz they are mean/unreliable, and their bite is awful. despite the bashing, they are my favorite lizards, but they arent for everyone.

i haven't found my sol. island skinks/corucia to be mean at all. i've had a trio for over a year and none have ever bitten me. i left them alone the first few months. now one of them likes to come out and crawl on my arm or around the room. the other two still are shy and turn their heads away from me if i reach toward them. but they have never tried to bite. i know some do and that they have a strong bite if they do bite. but i wonder if it has to do with how you approach them? the thing i have to deal with is the sharp claws as they are arboreal and have VERY strong legs and sharp claws. it's easy to get covered in little scratches just from having them on your bare skin, hanging on, not that they are trying to hurt you. i have used an emory board and filed down the tips a bit, very carefully. -Lucy
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Lucy
www.smalldragons.com

Here's a link to a decent article on PTS care (Although the author does feed superworms to his PTS, which is not recommended). If you follow the link near the bottom about breeding PTS it will take you to an article by David Kirkpatrick that has a good list of references. Herpbreeder.com also has a reference list for PTS in their "Reptiles and Amphibians of the World" section.

Sorry, I can't recommend any breeders (none of the breeders of my animals do commercial sales), but *please* keep looking, and let us know what you find.

Good luck!
Link

thanks for that care sheet it was really good i have a much better idea what i'm up against.Hey zeteki do you keep monkey tails? if you do can you shwo me a pic of your cage?

Here's a link to a photo album that has some cage pics. However, I'm no longer using that cage. It was a glass display case that had been modified. I removed the glass top and cut it into panels and made screen panels as well so I could closely crontrol the amount of air flow through the cage. THe wood that you see in there is a root ball from an oak tree.
The skinks are now in a larger (approx. 4.5 ft. tall x 3 ft. x 1 ft.) wire ferret cage. I used plastic fencing and zip ties around the whole thing, because they could just squeeze out between the bars otherwise. The new cage is roomier, but it means that the entire room the skinks are in has to be kept very warm and humid, which is not easy or cheap. But I'm moving in December and building custom cages, so I'm willing to put up with the wire cages for now.

There are a couple folks around here who have built pretty nice custom cages for their PTS, perhaps if we're lucky they'll check in.
Link

Hmm. Just realized that in one of the cage pics you can see both the glass cage and the ferret cage (from when I was quarantining a new arrival). That was before I put on the plastic fencing. The pics of the new skinks (the first 2 in the album) show the escape-proofed cage.