Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi
I bought a baby blue tongue (8 weeks old) on Tuesday and it ate an african land snail as soon as we got it home. Since then it has not eaten. That makes it 3 days without food. I rang the pet store and they said it had eaten 6 snails the day I bought it so it might not be hungry. The cage is setup right - temp, humidity and substrate etc all correct, so why isn't it eating? I would really appreciate some advice because everything I've read says they are really voracious eaters...
Thanks

First -- african land snails are illegal in the U.S.
You might want to read this:
exoticpets.about.com/cs/rarespecies/a/pestsGALs.htm

Second -- did it eat the shell too?
If your baby skink is small (under 12 inches), I wouldn't feed it a snail with the shell on it - period! They have canned snails that are much better. Adult skinks are more capable of crushing the shells and spitting out what they don't want.

Third -- baby skinks should be fed a nutritiuos diet daily, one with protein and lots of vitamins & minerals. We feed our young ones daily, and they can eat 2-3 tbsp of food each time. As they get older, that increases.

You can find a good diet and other info on this site:
www.bluetongueskinks.net/

If your young one doesn't eat soon - take it to a vet! It could have problems - they really are hungry little kids!

Morgana

www.reptayls.com

I am located in the UK so african land snails are fine here. I will phone the reptile store again and then try the vet. Thanks

Hi. I took the skink back to the pet store. I exchanged it for another one. They will care for the skink and hopefully treat it. By the morning it was closing its eyes and sneezing - which I think explains the non feeding...
Thanks for the response anyway