alanmin4304

I understand that there are some very well coloured beardies about and that some people have had problems breeding some of them as well. I guess any reptile is worth what someone will pay for it but the value would drop off considerably if they do not want to breed. Of course if they were well coloured and bred well the value would be great until the market was saturated (and with beardies that wanted to breed that would not take long).

Try to keep it friendly and polite please. Some people will be interested in the original posting and subsequent replies.

I don't know a lot about staghorn but flourish excel takes a while to work usually. There are algae cures available for ponds that may work as well. I also understand that lowering the pH will help. Any of these things need to be done slowly or the fish may not like it.

Cost me $160 to buy one square metre of stainless steel mesh (minimum allowable purchase) when building a terrarium so I wouldn't want to think about the cost of an outsid enclosure of any size. We have built a small one which the beardies go into on good warm days to get a bit of sun and it is up on legs---a lot cheaper. They imediately go and hide in the shade but that is another issue.

One of the first requirements I think is to learn how to breed your own live food otherwise it can get very expensive and they end up not being fed the good kai. It can take a while to get it right and they sure can put away the live food.

I would compost the plant with the staghorn as it needs more light than you have.

Welcome to the forums. An air pump works by creating surface movement and therefore increasing the surface area for the exchange of gases.

I found that synthetic lawn good for the littlies. I thought they might be as messy as the adults but cleaning was pretty easy. Burn the edges with a flame to make sure there are no loose bits. They get pretty keen when scoffing live food and take a big bite and it saves them getting a mouth full of plastic. Good to see he has "caught the bug"

He may need a large net and running shoes.

Nice looking wee guy. How old is it? They sure can put the live food away.

Sterile can mean unable to reproduce or carrying no diseases. In the latter sense the only sterile mealworm is a dead cooked one.

Sterile can be different to sterilized.

Yes, I have bred them as well.

I don't know where you got the idea that biosupplies mealworms are sterile as I have bred heaps from them.

If you push a reptile to grow too fast by feeding lots of protein chances are you will end up with MBD. Pushing a leopard gecko to 40 grams in 4 months is asking for trouble I think. In my view too many people super feed reptiles to get them to breed sooner and I don't think it is a good thing. Of course you would expect the males to grow a bit faster.

It would be great but who would admit to having secret squirels?

You need to make sure you have a good supply of live food for young beardies so I would advise you to get them breeding before you invest in a beardie. My babies were going through 6-10 each a day---expensive to buy.

As phoenix said, water has a greater affinity for O2 than CO2. In rural areas, particularly over swampy areas of peat there can be a lot of CO2 in well water and this makes the water acid which keeps the iron in the ferrous state and this makes the water taste foul. There are all sorts of expensive ways to correct this but the cheapest is to aerate the water and this converts the iron to the ferric state by driving off the CO2. You need to encourage the CO2 to stay in solution so it is available to your plants (and iron as well) by not aerating or increasing the surface area of the tank.

They will grow floating leaves. I leave them alone and they will seperate when ready and float---then you plant them. They grow readily even if they have no roots.

Ordinary plastic bags are OK if you put them in the box upside down.

Stay alert. NZ needs more lerts.

I hope you don't drown any bees.

I notce someone is selling red necked turtles on trademe. Are there any right wingers out their who want to buy a friend.

Phoenix44 is on to it. S. subulata will grow quite tall in the right conditions but I have not seen microfolia grow over about 30mm in my tanks. It might grow taller in intense light but would not expect it to get much taller. Needs less light than E. tenellus varieties.

There are other levals of restriction as well and it applies to all organisms---reptiles, birds, fish, plants etc. An organism may be approved for being in private hands by Erma and Maf but the Regional Council can decide they are a problem in their region and impose restrictions e.g. Bluies in Auckland