Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Jobi
I was wondering if you could tell me how you keep or kept dracos? esp what size cage and how you got them to eat? I have some and they wont eat unless the food comes to them wich is very hard sence crickets stay on the bottom of the cage and fruit flys escape most of the time, so i have to hand feed them or they wont eat, and it stresses them out a lot,

also how did you keep your hatchling acanthosaurus? I just had one hatch out today from eggs laid at the end of last october, about 122-124 day incubation, I did not bother incubateing them with a light bulb as i had planed as i thought i would cook them so i just set them on my dest,

draco ar solitary animals, if kept in groups or pairs they dont do well. however when kept single out of sight of other lizards they feed and do very good on small crickets and flying ants.
i keep them in bare set ups, one or two branches in 15gal tanks and a 25w regular bulb as sole heat. I put them in pairs only for breeding, witch is whenever females ovulates.

after some time they get boring to keep, so I whent the gonocephalus and hipsylurus way.

as for acanthosaura I posted alot on this forum alredy.

rgds

thanks Jobi
I have thought about seperateing them as they are a bit agressive to each other, but have you seen them chase or go hunt after food? thats my main problem they never actively hunt they just sit and wait they eat crickets and mealworms if i put them right in front of them but its getting realy tireing, they also drink a lot of water! how do you know the females are ready to mate put them next to the males cage and see what happens? when you did breed them what was there incubation time?

right now iam finding my A capra pretty boring they never move much or bask, iam trying to get A armata and G chameleonotus as they seem a lot more interesting, I have G belli but they dont breed, do you still use those same corugated plastic cages with the 25watt bulb?

hey I am very interested in some g bellie, if I help you breed them whold you be willing to sell me a litter and export to Montreal.

dracos are easy if you keep them right, they will hund small crickets,pill bugs,mini mealworms and wigned ants if they feel secure. your job is to allow this.

these lizards should never be handled, an ovulating female will look bloated, you can check her out at night by simply lifting and stretching her wing while shes sleeping.
also when introducing a male to a female, dont handle simply transfer the male on branch at night.
males have large teritory with many females.

they can easaly produce 4 to 6 clutches a year.

capras are prety active in my care, they feed and bath once in the morning and again at night. as in nature they will spend the rest of the day digesting and thermoregulating, they also have various display signals as with dracos and gonos, these body language are a vital part of these lizards hiarchy. a keeper should learn from them. especialy with dracos as these will flea each other more then 100 feet in nature, this is imposible in captivity and the main reason for deminish.

as for my caging, I use whatever is at hand be it plastic, glass,wood or screen makes no diference. your ability to read your lizards will guide your husbandry, its not the other way aronde. like you I am still learning a new.

hears a hint, all my rain forest lizards breed in the dry season.
this cage is bone dry

thanks Jobi
about the bellis, I had orderd G grandis and was sent belli, and i put them in a plastic tote with a lot of water and cork bark chuncks thinking they were juvie grandis, there still in the tote just without the water, as I lost one of the females that was very gravid becuse she got stuck under a branch and drowned, I tried to cut her open and save the eggs but all three eventualy molded and died, I have what i think is one pair left, and iam moveing them into a bigger cage to see what happens, I would definatly send you some babies if i get some, sence i have gotten so much info from your posts on here, and there would be no exporting requied as iam in BC,

I lost another draco the other day so iam down to two wich i hope are a pair iam putting one in a 20g tank today and see if they do any better seprate, before the one died it changed color to an almost pure white.

also i now have seven baby A capras and iam hopeing for a couple more eggs to hatch, thought they have not eaten yet they are strong and pretty fast when they whant to be,

off topic but Jobi have you ever kept/bred amievas or uromastyx?

yes I produced plenty of both, I stoped because they are high energy $$ species.

acanthosauras gonos and hipsylurus dont cost much to keep and have more to offer. they will bring me at least 20 years of enjoyment, I hatched a lemond yellow gono and some nice blue x red acantho last fall. hope to breed them this year.

did you like the uromastyx aside from the $$? were they hard to breed? iam i have been looking for some for a wile but they cost $200 around here,

also I now have 11 or so baby capras, they hatched out strong and fat, but i cant get them to eat now i have tried small crickets and mel fruit flys but nothing,and there starting to slim down a bit much for my likeing, what did you start your babys on? I just added a jar lid today with an air stone bubbling in case they whant to swim or drink but i have been spraying them afew times a day as well.

uros are very easy if you dont dehydrate them like 90% keepers do! feed them dendelion flowers,leafs and steam, clovers the hole plant, bok chow, dry lentiles, and 10% insects no more.
dont bother with any other foods or you will mess things up.

as for your babies, sorry but strong babies feed hours after hatching, they run any mouving insects and feed like thers no tomorow.
over the years pepoles keep teling me how there lizards have no appetites or dont feed much, well kept lizards of all species and age feed with gusto, thats what they are geneticaly programed to do in life.

once I was aboute to optain 1.1 fuji iguanas, the breeder said the female was a problem feeder sins birth, so I said forget it!

you see with experience we get to know and understand the importance of proper incubation husbandry, its effects on babies and therfor future propagations. a good breeder will explain this to you and help you avoide such problems.
keeping and breeding them is simply not enought, always room for improuvements.

sorry I know this is not the Uro forum but, i keep reading to keep them realy dry and that moisture is bad for them so how would they get deydrated, as long as they have green vegtables to eat? I plan on giveing them a lot of dandelion as my butterfly agamas like it as well and I know its good for them, and its free!
I was reading some of your posts a long wile ago and i think you mentioned something about female Uros eating locusts in the breeding season and that it help them produce more than one clutch? sorry if i got that wrong I cant realy remeber, did your Uros ever have more then one clutch a season?

and are you saying theres something wrong with the way I incubated the eggs or the condishion of the parents? they still have not eaten that i have seen but I increased the strenth of there basking light and Iam misting them more, I threw a mealworm in there cage today and one went right over and tried to eat it even though it was way to big so mabie there just not interested in crickets and ffs, Iam going to pick up some mini mealworms tommorow and see if it gets them going, some have lost a bit of wieght but i still have all 12 of them so far so.

first I do not agree with curent uro husbandry, it simply makes no sens to me. all uros species live in or near ancient river water is life to all creatures.

keepers strugling with them have no understanding of this.

I live in central fl usa. I ended up with a handful of mali uros about 10 yrs ago. The first few years I had them I kept them inside in the typical manner people keep them. On the dry side hot basking spot etc. They did ok that way. A friend of mine and wy wife both kept trying to convince me to try them outside which I was reluctant to try since beardies tend to crash when the rainy season hits here if you keep them outside and even veiled chameleons which do fine don't seem to like the rainy season so much. I figured uros were much more xeric than beardies and veileds and would hate it.
They did excellent with the exception of the year (2004) that we had 3 hurricanes hit within 6 weeks time including one that stayed over our house for a week. I did loose a few females that year that were ready to lay eggs and apparently did not due to how saturated their substrate was. There were other urgent matters to attend to in light of the situation (3 storms lots of damage and downed trees.) and I did not catch what was happening in time. Apart from that they do excellent here even in the rainy season although if steady rain was expected several days in a row I would cover their cage with plastic until the sun returned. The soil here is sandy and drains very quickly which I am sure helps. They love to burrow so if you are keeping any you may want to consider that with your enclosure. Perhaps keeping them along the lines of how people are currently keeping Savannah monitors or the odatria monitors. They definitely prefer a lot more moisture than I would have ever suspected.