Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Greetings,

I am new to this forum so bare with me. I have an 11 year old goddaughter who called me last night to tell me she wanted a Green Basilisk and what could I tell her about them ? Since I know nothing about lizards, I told her I'd look in to it and I can't think of a better place then here to look. Is a Green Basilisk a good lizard to start out with ? And what should she expect to spend to get started and maintain an animal like this ?

Thank you for your responses.

Not so much for a beginner. I laughed when I read this post because that was the same thing I asked my parents for when I was in third grade... First we should take in to perspective what the animals natural environment consists of. We're looking at an extremely tropical lizard, so first thing is, you need high humidity, and fairly high heat. Therein lies your first issue to deal with. No matter what kind of heat you use, it's going to dry out the enclosures unless you close off most of the ventilation or spray them twice a day. This generally leaves normal glass aquariums out of the question. You'll need to construct, or pay for a plastic or wooden enclosure. Secondly, this is a lizard that can actually run on water. It's meant to do so in the nature to escape predators and probably also to catch prey. This being said, it's going to be a fairly active lizard, and need a VERY large enclosure(likely out door) with a ton of water. Not only is it very difficult and expensive to build an appropriate enclosure and to keep the temperature and humidity up, but it's also very difficult to keep up with a varied diet for a lizard like this without a lot of effort put forth. Crickets won't cut it for this lizard. I recommend a varied diet of superworms, roaches, fish, and a mouse once a week to keep up calcium requirements. I got my first pair a year ago, and it was the biggest hassle I'd ever dealt with. Beautiful lizards, and I did manage to get them to breed for me, but a substantial amount of effort and time is required to keep them healthy and happy. All that aside, I'm assuming your goddaughter will want to hold the lizard, and well... these lizards do not like being held at all. Ever. In fact, they don't like even being seen. Not a good lizard for a beginner at all. Consider rather a bearded dragon. No crazy humidity requirements, generally easy to feed and care for, and also make great companions. Or a leopard gecko. Good luck.

Mason, Thank you so much for your very informative response. After I looked up how big these things get, I was pretty sure this was not gonna work, but the information you provided tells me it is worse than I thought. Yeah and one of the first things she told me was how she wanted to hold it .

Mason, again thank you for taking the time to respond and all your useful information. I'll stir her towards something more manageable.

Bill

Anytime! I just know that I was in that same position many years ago, and my parents couldn't tell me anything. A lot of it is from a lack of information on the internet and outdated reptile books. Things have changed severely over the past ten years in the herpetological(making up words here) world. Best of luck to you, and if you have any more questions feel free to post them on the forums or pm, best of luck.