jc254

and by common i mean Eastern

there are by rumor Chinese water dragons, but i dont know the legalistic around anything other than the common water dragon. Also if there was there would be a HUGE $$$ attached to them maybe $2000-3000 and then you couldn't tell/show anyone.

but licqour stores still have some regulations arround what they can sell. (age/on and off licence/Intoxiacation) where the pet trade there isnt allot of restrictions or inforcement unless its something cuddly. Some of those photos could warrent prosacution, yes it is because they owner isnt informed properly but that excuse doesnt hold up when talking about cats and dogs.

slept through it without even knowing we had one until the second rumble about 5pm They are always at the worst times, I have a stats exam today between 3-5 so it would be ideal for it to have happend them.

sadly pet stores and breeders just sell in volume for the $$$ Should be a licence required to sell your live stock because its really sad how people sell to owners who simply dont have a clue on what they are doing. At the end of the day its all about the money

It would be expensive and to get MAF to create a IHS would not be a priority for them so it may take years if its approved

because you have to get a new genus on the approved list, then how do you import them? do they need to be quarantined for disease?

you would have to do a new organism application. It would be declined, maybe freeze dried but still would require a import permit for it.

I moved to study down here in CHCH this year and i have not once regretted it. I moved into a flat with people id only met twice and now were a best of friend, practically a family in ourselves. The CBD is still a no go and some parts are devastated but for the most of the city its fine, just a few unfortunate areas. With a population of CHCH and the time the EQ hit i am surprised we only lost so few, still tragic on so many levels but this is life and if anything this EQ has shown me that life is short. In my opinion the EQ didnt feel that intense but all to their own and i was in bed when it happened (best alarm clock ever, never ran so fast in my jocks before to the tv and tank) CHCH is a beautiful city and i cant wait to see how town is rebuilt and it would be awesome if you designed the lay out. I think you have a better chance of being hit by a bus in Aux then killed in a EQ down here, not only that isnt there a volcano under AUX? As long as you can deal with the chilly weather def make move its life changing

thats freaking awesome, they where afraid that all the adults left where to old to breed!!!

does not matter, your opinion from your small number of owned dragons is irrelevant. To draw the conclusions you have made you would need a control sample of at least 200 dragons to make a substantial argument favorings your opinion. I have never owned a bearded dragon so cant/wont pass my opinion on their bermation cycle. The reptiles i keep currently snake necks, water dragons and box tortoises all are captive breed but to out breed plasticity takes many generations and if you want i have more uni exams comming up but in three weeks i can tear that post appart with ecology, stats and evolution?

they are just a identification tool.

Answer for the dragons -> Obviously its ideal to keep reptiles outside, we can only replicate so much with the use of D3 bulbs so natural sunlight is better for their bodies. However we cannot say thats why they are bigger and more fertile, you dont have a large enough test group to draw those conclusions. There may be documented evidence of this direct link but im not going to research it. We could say that yes there is a direct link or it could be that one water dragon you own, or a coincident that the inside grown in smaller? maybe your tank is to small, maybe the temps/diet is incorrect.

Large rocks, they love to hunt through them for food.

But yes I agree that there should be a sub forum with care sheets, where everyone has a input. Then they are written up and made locked stickys. However there will have to be a common thresh hold because everyone has different ways and techniques

One week is enough to let me know how dirty they can make their tank, it's a observation not needing 40 years of exp to determine that turtles are messy little critters and no harm in doing large water changes. Infact it should be encouraged

I would have to check my info but im going to blindly chuck this out there. Some reptiles are yes have fossil records that date back to the dinosaurs however some of them are newish and only appeared this late time period. The Cretaceous period is where we saw mammals move from water to land and allot of reptiles emerged from this stage. So some are only a few million years old. Many would argue that the dinosaurs where perfect creatures but a mass extinction saw them removed, every specie will naturally go extinct, if there are 1 million species in the world, one will go extinct every year for 1 million years. Its the way of life nothing is perfect. You can and do/will modify animal traits to our desire, if we look overseas their colour strains on Leopard Geckos suggests that in as little as 30 years a species genetic information can be twisted depending on how we like the colour of their skin, behavior and survival skills go hand in hand with this

sorry yes crickets

I would have to disagree with you, with the amount of food they churn through daily and the nature of the food i would have to recommend 100% water changes. They are filthy creature and i dont think allot of people realize this, I was amazed what two snake necks can do to a 300 tank in a week now imagine 5 of them going at it!!!

yes but keepers select for size/colour/temperament these traits are all selected for in domestication

you need to use really fine substrate, I have read that it can break the females egg laying tube if its to course of thick.

and lastly before i put the keyboard away, i can see this coming up to bite me. No I am not a expert in reptile keeping. However who is? everyday we learn something new about our scaly friends, no one can possibly know everything about a reptile specie or in fact any specie. I am undertaking a masters late next year in bio-security or something related but is doesn't qualify me as a expert so my theory in the above two posts i encourage you to disagree with me and it could be a interesting topic.

bang on the $$$ it is a survival technique, reptiles if they could would eat all year round. However as we know reptiles are cold blooded requiring external source of temp e.g. sun. Without this their body isnt at a temp where the organs ect can function at a required level. So they stop eating because they cant digest it, the low temps stop all productivity slowing the reptile down, this is where they usually borrow to escape the extreme climates (rain, wind, frost ect) when the temps raise then the emerge, breeding could be tied as a stimulant response to the raised temps. It gives the eggs a adequate temperature to hatch at and more time to get ready for the cold season (build up fat stores) If they didnt brumate they would die as they generally would freeze of starve to death. Its a survival Mechanism

firstly i rarely make posts or comment on threads, but there you go. Expert : A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area In my opinion a expert is someone who has completed a PHD, why because then you have the proven knowledge and skill to claim to be a 'expert' in any chosen feild of study/interest. However all to your own, from where i sit i can see 6 text books that i could reference for you that suggest captive conditions in breeding encourage domestication and breed out wild traits. example: the fox, during WW2 a experiment was conducted on foxes to see if breeding increased domestication through the generations. Now evolution tells us that if there is no sign of the trait in the parents then the offspring wont display it (you cant show what you havnt got) However they saw a increased domestication, barking and the ears begin the drop down. Now if we use this is Water Dragons and when the last import was theoretically before June 1998 (could be off on dates) after each generation we would see further domestication. Also being that the population of water dragons in NZ is low we could argue that we are seeing a bottle neck in the population, where after each generation the genetic variation becomes tighter and tighter suggesting that the specie wouldn't be as hardy as its wild cousins. It would be more easily susceptible to disease, virus and poor captive conditions. If you took a 10x generation where the parents hadnt been hibernated to such a degree that you propose to do (or at all) then its off spring would find it really difficult to survive such a stress full encounter. Hibernation has been documented as a stress full act on any specie that undertakes it. Auckland may have the same temps as Queensland on paper but there a whole different environmental factors that influence hibernation such as; humidity, wind patterns, diet external environment e.g. substrate. its midnight so i hope this all makes sense. just finished a genetic report for uni so im really over this subject. However if i can be bothered i will tie this in with referenced articals and text books. Lastly Repto i have a really good knowledge on reptiles and fish and you would be really amazed on what i know. Yes i have done ALLOT of research on hibernation of certain reptiles but its also a comfort to get the yes or no from someone else with direct experience on the matter. Its not everyday that i take reptiles on a plane and during the CC earthquake i couldn't afford for security to turn me away.