Bob Iv been keeping reptiles none stop 30 years, to be honest its only the 5 past years that really matters, the rest of my past husbandry is obsolete, thank goodness I haven’t written any books back in the days.



Modern herpetoculture should be based on feeding first and foremost, this is the no;1 goal we must focus on as keepers.



I start with a bare naked cage to witch I ad or subtract until I get my lizards to perform.

First determine the nature of your lizards, in your case (highly aquatic) Ingo suggested 45g water section filtered and heated, I totally agree with him, furthermore you should have control over the waters temperature from 78f to 88f, this range is easy to achieve when you have mass (volume) to play with, I learned this from working with turtles, a low wattage reflector and bulb over a shallow water area will create a hot bath often favoured as stimulate the metabolism, many keepers fail to provide temperature gradients in the water section.



As Ingo suggested branches overhanging water will be readily used, provide enough options for all 3 lizards, they will favour such branches over any other branches. Mine will drop and hide under cork, this shelter keeps them from farther panicking.



Now that you’ve got the water and branches right, you need to provide heat options, forget about bright lights with these lizards, I get much better results using 3 or 4 regular red 25w incandescent bulbs, use reflectors to direct heat over parts of the favourite branches.



I rather use a few well placed 25w bulbs in a 6 to 8 feet cage then one 100w or worst a 150w bulb, low wattage bulbs don’t dehydrate your lizards cage, having a few will allow all lizards to benefit from the heat when needed, it will also avoid domination over resources.



I use sphagnum moss over my land area, dirt or leaf litter works good, sometimes I even use hard wood chips.



In such a set up! Theirs no reason for a lizard to refuse food, at least no physiological reasons. Usually they will start feeding ASAP in the right environment, that is if you don’t stress them with any type of manipulation, this is what I meant when I said, if they don’t feed right after you disturb them, this means they are stressed out, stress is the invisible killer, 100,000s imports die from stress every year, that’s every single year of my 30 years of herping, and I am being conservative. Now you understand what I mean when I don’t display new unknown reptiles to the public? Most keepers can’t acclimate the common and easy to keep species, gonocephalus sp simply don’t stand a chance in hell.



My gonos and acanthosaura’s all have aces to day temps from 75f to 130f basking (yes a 25w bulb @ 8in = 130f), and they use these temps regularly, if lizards aren’t allowed to heat, there metabolism shuts down and they stop feeding, again feeding dictates all aspects of husbandry. My temps goes down to 75f at night but my water stays at 80f allowing my lizards the option to use this heat source while sleeping.



I absolutely never spray, I simply don’t see a need for this, lizards do stress when they see a large predator pointing something at them that throws water, its far more effective to have some sort of water movement, the lizards will use it on there own terms.



Theirs absolutely no reasons to disturb new imports, when set up in the right conditions, they will start performing if left alone, any disturbance will cause lactic acid build ups that are very long to process by the very small muscles of these tree lizards, being sedentary only adds to the problem.



rgds

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