Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey Everyone,

In an attempt to try and break free from the current trend with these animals, I've taken Jobi' advice and this is what the end result is!

It consists of 2 water dishes(1 at each end). The dish on the left in the picture has a small Zoomed Heatpad attached to the bottom of the cage. The cage is lifted off the desk to allow air flow. This should get the dish water to about 85-90. Next I've placed my humidity trapping wrap on half of the enclosure. Next I've placed more branches about, and a few directly below the 25 watt bulb. Finally, I've taken out the foliage, and removed the front cork off the glass. This took about 2 hours to finish, but I believe that this should work much in the way that Jobi' cages do.

BTW: Jobi, thank you for your little bits of information you share, and for advising me regarding my setup. This is the most fun I've had on a message board in a long time. Hopefully, these guys start to come alive with these new changes.

Please let me know what you all think.............

BTW: The moisture is due to me misting the cage. Since it was cleaned out and wiped down, this is the only mist I'll be suppling for a few days, and see how they do.

Also, I've taken out the bubbler, so we shall see how well this works.

Jobi, do your animals recognize water without it moving? There is much talk about this, so maybe you can open my eyes with this also!

Anthony

In a week time you would be able to say if this change mad any significant difference, I believe your lizards will be less shy and more out going, I don’t think they will turn into amevias but still more active.

I am presently raising about 48 babies of acanthosaura and gonocephalus, I keep 12 per cage and only one lizard per cage is not doing well, don’t know why?
But I know that I will not interfere, if a lizard has no will to live I will not force life in it, these usually don’t make good adults or breeders, and should you offer them to someone they are candidate for a bad herping experience, so I let them go, sometimes they turn over and start kicking butt.

Of all these and all my WC adults none have problems finding water, I love the water bowls you have, crickets don’t drown in them.

Now you have made a lot of changes, the best is to leave them settle inn.
Try to avoid handling them until they come to you, then you will enjoy them even more, because you will feel that they are interacting with you, not you with them.

Later if your satisfied with your lizards behaviour, you can do the entire wall with cork and silicone epiphytes on them, they last and look good, some even bloom colourful flowers.
rgds

Appreciate the quick response Jobi! I'm going to leave them alone like you've mentioned, it will be interesting to see what happens with all of this. I'll throw in some crickets with them today and see what happens. I'm really excited to see what changes come when I start using the plastic enclosure you've mentioned.

Anyways, all the advice is appreciated!

Thanks,

Anthony

Interesting observation I've just made. Since I now have heated water by using a heat pad, the crickets that are left in with the dragons are drawn to the heat, and thus stay out of the canopy leaving the dragons alone. This works out great for me considering I don't have to remove the crickets and my dragons get to snack on their time(thus as we talked about earlier).

This seems like a great thing, it can only get better from here! Until another time...........

Anthony

I dust my crickets with rep-cal d3, the problem is the longer the crickets are in the tank the les dust they have on them, I try to feed less more often to avoid mineral deficiency.

Also a none hungry lizard will avoid being exposed to insects, this means he will most likely not use the water bowl.

Just got back from a weekend vacation and found lots of interesting reading on this board! WOW!

I want to point out here that my babies are raised without bubblers! ; ) I know that I tell everyone to use water movement but have to admit here that this is something I have found is helpful in acclimating a WC that is dehidrated and it is something that helps boost humidity in a large viv. But, even my armata are no longer getting the bubbler or other water device due to the fact that it is just too much to keep up with in terms of keeping the water facility clean.

Since my armata use the water dish as a potty daily it that would mean a fresh air stone, water pump, or other water device and bowl daily. Since I don't do this I simply use plastic plant saucers and keep a stack of them handy. When I find the water soiled I simply pull out the dirty one and replace it and fill with clean fresh water!

So, the babies that you have are used to using the water without the stone or other device in it and should adapt to changing back quickly! ; )

Marcia
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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

I'm so glad to hear that. I've been going crazy trying to keep water in a dish small enough as not to drown them. Constantly refilling it. Going to take bubbler out and see what happens. I also took airstone out of armata cage. They don't seem to need any encouragement to use the water.