repto

belly full of good stuff,then feed them out,you know the story,you are what you eat?

the thing with frogs that alot of people do not realise is when they change to a frog they LEAVE the water.They only go back to breed.You can find them anywhere miles from any water source.I would say the 50/50 land water habitat may have more humidity than what they like.Is the water heated?They should be hibernating at the moment,although I just walked past my fishpond this morning and two jumped in,also saw a waterdragon out in the sun,quite weird weather as we had a couple of decent frosts during the week.

realised that gannet,just wanted to make the point that glass tanks like that are not ideal.

they love the heat and need it for egg production,mating to produce fertile eggs etc.I have a 100w spot lamp and a 2 ft flourecent which gives off a bit of heat.At the moment its getting fairly cool at night etc in my garage so should go up to A 150w.You want a temp of 32 according to some info I have .Humidity is not liked by them and the photo gannet put up of the glass tank setup would not be ideal in my opinion,especially with the dept of waste etc.Mine is wood with a mesh back wall covered with a sheet of polystyrene,front glass sliders nothing on the floor but a layer of droppings which are quite dry and no smell.The egg laying is just a low cardboard carton with holes cutout to fit disposable clear coffeecups which you can often see the eggs down the sides,change them for incubation every sunday.keep the fresh grass in there ,a dish of bran no water other than the grass which is stood in jars of water.Wire mesh ladders for them to climb for basking andmoulting their skins.

basically just for food for their reptiles, fish,birds etc a good source of protein for animals that need it.

convicts with some upturned flowerpots etc for hidey holes would be my choice,assuming your tank is heated,cheap,tough can get big enough to not get eaten.

alot of stuff you can get out of your own garden,worms,praying mantis,moths,earwigs etc.for just one or two would not be that hard to keep the food up.I gave one of my last years runts that had had its tail tip nipped off by its siblings to a friend.She raised it on earth worms from her garden a culture of mealworms,salads of dandelion,mesculan etc and some commercial pellets(that it did not like)and it is now the biggest heaviest healthy lizard you would find(with a short tail)

make sure you don`t let them go short of water in the form of a piece of sponge etc so they can`t drown.For my breeders I used a small lidded jar with a wick which was good that they could climb up.The little ones were a pain in that it was so warm that they need the water dried out quick,one miss and heaos would die.After a month or so all you would end up with was one snack feed.Hope you have better luck.Some people seem to do it better than others.

locusts for me over crickets.The main reason being the growth rate.Crickets were slow and always some would escape and hide among the furnishings,apparently they can come out at night and nibble on the dragons?but never saw this happen.crickets used to eat better food in the form of flake etc but the locusts eat huge volumes of green stuff which they convert to protein,the dragons lap them up and grow like hell,I just give them a coating of calcium powder and/or supplment.They all get eaten fast unlike the crickets.Once you get your system sussed its all go,I just remove the eggs every sunday,give fresh grass as required and have babies hatching every week.The dragons can eat newly hatched locusts straightaway which was good too.

they come from deserts and generally dry areas.They have hard hooks on the end of the abdomen that they dig down into the substrate with .if they can`t dig as deep easier for the babies to get up to the surface??who knows try both if it works for you go for it,have tried both,pumice was better for me,have to go put a couple of hunderd newly hatched into a rearing cage,I rest my case.

I would go with the perlite,I use pumice propagating sand which is basically what perlite is.Have used vermiculite as well but had better more reliable hatch rate with the pumice sand,found the vermiculite held a bit too much water and had mould probs,whatever works for you but thats what I found.water at a ratio of 100-15 by volume is reccomended,removing containers as they are used and replacing regardless after a week.

managed to farm a couple of clutches out for rearing which basically saved my bacon on the feeding,touch wood have not lost one toenail,tail tip ....yet?Alot more work than most people realise,have not had much time to enjoy the big ones??

have a good fertile one here if you want/need to try another male,67 eggs ...2 clears this year,hes a yellow,well marked.let me know if you want any ideas,cheers.

both have their good points,waters get more interesting to me when they get a bit of size,but I am an impaitient bugger.Hey Mark bred any beardies yet?

thats the ones to find,will be worth waiting for.

if you mean on the underside?could be the start of a bit of infection or inflamation,can you post a pic?

you will be lucky with that request?

looks sweet to me too.I would suspect he has been kept with little or no sun in his previous place and is now showing the results of you looking after him better.

like lollies for them,too much is not recomended,i give mine baby birds out of the nest,same thing not too much but good for the females when filling with eggs.

hi mark,hows those beardies going?hatched some out yet?shame about your green ones,really poorly handled the whole thing.

a word of caution for prospective locust raisers,be careful where you get your grass from.Even the slightest traces of pesticide or herbicide will not necessarilly kill your breeders but will render them sterile.You can get around this by growing your own food as in sprouted wheat,you have to plan ahead as to how much to grow in advance etc.Also the temperature needs to be quite warm to stimulate good egg production,32 is optimum.40 degrees will kill them.They do not need a water source if the grass is fresh as it needs to be.Also in my experience I had better sucess with pumice sand as a laying medium,I did hatch some with vermiculite but it was not as reliable for me with vermiculite.I moisten the sand add the containers and change once a week for fresh ones wether they have eggs or not as they get too dry and its just as easy to change the lot.They take 18 days from laying to hatch at around 30 degrees.

h2 o,as in water???is this a trick question?

not really a major if you want something alive and have to pay the price to get it and the necessary equipment to keep it alive and in good health raising abit of food for it is not too hard.Remember you are only talking one or two,we are talking about raising clutchs of young ones so that can be a bit demanding,just to keep a lizard or two is no drama.Alot of stuff you could find in the average backyard/garden.

but if you want them to grow to optimum size etc they need the live food more.The recommended ratio is 80%protein(insects etc)20%veges with plenty of d3 and uv lighting.This ratio reverses in adult dragons and they get 80%veges 20% protein.

did you get a hovabator?