nic8080

Your olive axolotl has GORGEOUS eyes! I've got a wild type axolotl called Steve... who turned out to be a girl and has laid heaps of eggs over the years! Luckily my other one was named Manu, a good unisex name.

I agree. As long as there's no discharge from the nostrils, sneezing's perfectly normal, particularly if your skink likes to burrow. As for temperatures, ideally you want to have a gradient. It's recommended that you have a basking spot at one end of your enclosure that gets to a temperature in the range of 35-37 degrees celsius so that your lizard can lie there and digest its food easily, then at the other end of your tank, a good temp to keep it is between 20 and 24 degrees, so that your lizard can go and cool down when it feels like it. At night time, it's good if your tank cools down to mimic night time outside. It can get as low as 15.5 degrees celsius with no problems. If it gets lower, your skink might start to go into brumation, so best not to let it get that low in summer. Hope that helps. www.bluetongueskinks.net is a great resource for information on blueys. -nicola

I wouldn't risk putting golden bells that much younger in with older ones. One of my golden bells ate another one and they were the same age, so the chance of cannibalism is greater with frogs which are younger and likely to be smaller. In my experience, it doesn't even matter if they are very well fed; if they get a chance to devour a passing tankmate, they will. Hence why the 2 golden bells that I have at the moment are in their own separate Exoterra terrariums. -nicola

Beautiful! Did you get to see them emerging from their eggs, or were they sitting there waiting for you when you checked on them?

What an amazing collection. If I ever end up living in Australia, I'm going to have a houseful of shinglebacks!

Haha, yup... although it was the bed in the spare room. He has weed on our bed a few times as well though, and worse. Strangely enough there's not much of a market for lizard-sized nappies -nicola

Hi all, (even though most of you probably don't remember me!) I've posted a video of Franklet my BTS eating a snail in case anyone is keen to have a look. Hopefully my posting it here won't break any of the site's rules. -nic

I know this is an old thread now, but I can't restrain myself from adding my opinion (sorry in advance). I reckon that wood-shavings are the best for blueys. The danger of impaction has already been noted by lots of people, so I won't go into that. Wood shavings allow your bluey to engage in burrowing, one of its favourite past-times in the wild and will also soak up urine. You can spot clean the poos right out by grabbing them, and the few surrounding chips around them out of the tank when you find them. Also, I have noticed that Franklet is a lot more active around his house when he's got lots of wood shavings to go burrowing in. If you do choose to use wood shavings, it is recommended to use ASPEN shavings rather than pine shavings, as pine shavings contain phenols which may harm your lizard. Aspen shavings are quite expensive but do last a long time, because you buy them in bales that have been compressed. I've been using the same bale for about 6 months and there's still a little bit left of it, so it's not as expensive as it might seem at first. -nicola BTW - I think it's awesome that you've decided to get a bluey. I adore my Franklet to pieces, and you'll balance out the beardie to bluey owning ratios a (very) little bit on this forum

Hi amb44, A bluey is a fantastic choice for a pet IMHO. I would recommend that you get one as young as you possibly can and handle it a lot and it should tame down pretty quickly. I tend to take mine out of his tank whenever I'm doing anything which isn't too dangerous for him to be involved in and he is nice and placid and has never bitten me or displayed at me at all. If you can only find an adult, it's still possible that you'll end up with a nice friendly pet, but you might have to work a bit harder with your handling. A fantastic website with all the BTS info you'll ever need is at www.bluetongueskinks.net. -nicola

Hi everyone, I read this forum all the time but I don't usually post. Anyway, my axolotls have decided to spawn, so their tank is currently full of eggs. I can't raise them myself, so I was wondering whether anyone here is interested in taking them on? Their mother is a melanistic and their father is leucistic (sorry, no chance of albino babies there). I'm in the Wellington area. Cheers, -nicola