Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Welcome to kingsnake.com's message board system. Here you may share and discuss information with others about your favorite reptile and amphibian related topics such as care and feeding, caging requirements, permits and licenses, and more. Launched in 1997, the kingsnake.com message board system is one of the oldest and largest systems on the internet.

Click here to visit Classifieds
Click for ZooMed
Click for 65% off Shipping with Reptiles 2 You

Satanic/spearpoint questions

insular_exotics Jan 08, 2005 11:06 AM

Hi all-
I have been lurking now for about a year. I have read all of th einfo on the web I could find along with the little bit in a couple of books I have. And I'll be trying to get the Uroplatus book I've seen mentioned here as soon as I can (BTW, what's the author and title again?)

Anyway, I was wondering what substrate people use for quarantine for satanics and spearpoints (I'll be getting 2 pair next week, but not sure which species yet). At my work we usually use paper towel for quarantining herps to make fecal collection easy. If I provide enough cover (plastic plants) and perches (sticks), would this be workable for a 1-2 month quarantine? I have access to decent herp vets at work, and I know the first thing they'll want on these lizards is poop.

Also, I think I remember seeing or reading that these lizards should take 1/4 crickets. Is this the correct size? Are there other prey items I can use for variety? I have a small colony of Mad hissing roaches. Would the young one be acceptable for phants/ebanaui?

I'm sure there's more to ark, bu tthat should do for now. Thanks in advance for your help.
Rich Terrell
Insular Exotics
Insular Exotics Website

Replies (1)

Leah Jan 08, 2005 04:25 PM

For quarantine, papertowel is an option, however, it is really hard to keep the humidity up. I use a thin layer of coco fiber (the finely ground kind), moistened for my uroplatus quarantines. You will also want a lot of plants and sticks. I usually use a 10 gallon tank with the substrate as mentioned, a piece of corkbark or driftwood and a few live plants in the enclosure.

1/4 inch crickets should be fine, they love roach nymphs, wax worms (sparingly - they are fatty and usually are only partially digested) or moths, silkworms are sometimes eaten, as are mantids and once in a while, smaller superworms. For fresh imports, you'll want to use roaches and crickets, they take to these better than anything else. You will want to turn several roaches loose in there for hunting, but something that works really well is to use "bug stop" (roach barrier) around the top of a shallow deli cup and put the roaches in there, so you are sure they can find them. It sometimes takes a while for them to understand cup feeding- hence turning some loose.

We feed ours several roach species, which they love. Lobsters and discoids seem to be the favorite, I have not tried hissers with them, but they will work just fine as long as they are appropriately sized.

-Leah
-----
www.wildeyereptiles.com

Chameleons, geckos & invertebrates

Site Tools