Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have a male long tailed grass lizard. when i got him from the pet store two months ago he was housed with green tree frogs and fire belly toads. so i bought him and a fire belly toad. i have them both in a tank together and hes been doing fine but the last couple of days hes been kinda lathargic and gets sits around. i just got a garter snake and its tank is right next to his tank. could that be the problem? or is it the toad?

A lot of imported lizards like longtails are shipped under horrific coneitions which catch up to them after purchase. Longtails are very prone to having nasty black mites completely hidden in their surprisingly deep ventral scales. Paint some vegetable oil or mouthwash on their ventral surface and watch the mites pop out.

Secondly, your temperature may not be ideal for both species. Longtails like it about 85 degrees or so, probably hotter than the fire bellied toads. These toads like more humidity than the lizards probably like, as well.

Finally, fire bellied toads have toxins in their skin, as do most toads, and the toad might be contaminating the water in the habitat with these poisons, which are affecting the longtailed lizard.

The best thing would be to house them separately, and NOT in view of a big predator!

IMO put a piece of cardboard between the two tanks. I agree that the toad could be poisoning youur lizard, and your lizard should be placed in a non-toad environment, no matter what the cause of his despondence. But your lizard might be just sick. If your lizard does not perk up pretty soon, I urge you to find a good reptile vet. Small reptiles get overwhelmed with infections very quickly as I recently learned. He could have had a stable population of some bad cocci or salmonella, and it has grown out of control at this time. I nearly lost my baby female Jewelled Lacerta to that very scenario.

I had been used to my large lizards signalling me about their gut infections by slowing their eating, and I can take them in in a rather large two or three week window. Tiny reptiles have *much* smaller windows of opportunity to treat and heal.

I wish you all the best,

Roger

your never supposed to put two different types of reptiles together they get sick