In article ,
"Cindy" wrote:

What kind of lizards do you have? :-)

I have an 8-yr-old green iguana, a young savannah monitor, and 3 northern
blue-tongued skinks. Been looking at water dragons, but have managed to
resist so far.

lol I know the feeling....
Savanna monitors are pretty cool.
Is it big enough to eat mice?


I have two boa constrictors, one is 19 years old (Eve.) 2 rosy boas, 1
African clawed frog, 2 3-toed box turtles and a diamondback terrapin. I
think that's all.

Clawed frogs look SO cool!
I've drooled over them, but don't really have a proper habitat setup nor
space to put one yet, at least until the livingroom is finished. Siggy
would probably eat it tho' if I housed them together. Bullfrogs do that.

I have 5 ornate box turtles but am fixin' to pass those on to the local
nature center.


I just dropped 5 bucks on crickets yesterday for my pet bullfrog. She
is still a baby but is really growing fast, so beginning to eat a lot
more! She morphed in early January of this year. I bought her as a
tadpole.

I've always wanted a large frog! G Pretty tame too, especially
compared to leapard frogs. Siggy lets me handle and pet her. She's
about 2" long now and gettng hefty.

I gut load her crickets with a mix of fish food and reptile vitamins.
She has also increased her cricket intake since I put her on moss
instead of fishtank gravel. I think she finds it more comfortable. I
should have used that as substrate in the first place! I was worried
about ease of keeping it clean, but it appears it's actually going to
be easier than rinsing gravel once every couple of weeks.

I also gutload my crickets and mealworms, and I do feed frozen rats and
mice, as I don't enjoy killing them. I have some pet rats also--6 of them
are the hairless variety. They feel like warm felt.

Oh cool!
Yeah, I agree that the hairless rats are neat.
It's an autosomal recessive gene.
Do all your babies come out naked, or do you breed them?

I don't feed mealworms but now that I have her on moss, I'm considering
tossing some earthworms in there to see if she will take them. She can
use the variety. I have TONS of the big red wigglers naturalized in the
back yard.


I had an Argentine horned frog for about 10 yrs, but it died recently. I
started out with aquarium gravel for it too, but ended up using the moss.
Much nicer for the frog.

Indeed. And easier than I thought to keep clean. I'm not sure why, but
it seems to be keeping the water cleaner as well? I think the moss is
taking off her sheddings more easily so all that dead skin is not ending
up in the pond.

The crickets seem to stay more active on moss too.


I want to eventually build her a large vivarium once I finish
redecorating the livingroom. Half land and half water. Once she gets
bigger, she really should have access to feeder fish to eat, so that
will require a better aquatic habitat.

Are you going to build a wood one or use an aquarium?

Plan is to use a very large aquarium. At least 50 gallon or more.

I siliconed a divider
across a 50-gal. tank years ago for garter snakes--that worked very well.
Even had baby snakes before I eventually turned the big ones loose again.
(Yes, I know now you're not supposed to turn them loose, but didn't then.)
For a bullfrog I imagine you'd want at least an 80-gal. tank.

Yeah. The bigger the better. Right now she is in a 5 gallon, but she is
still pretty small.


You're in the reptile newsgroup too, right? You can get good information
there, although trolls have driven many of the regulars away. There's also
a Houston Herps yahoo group, but it's fairly new and not very active yet.

I was, but there was not much info. about frogs so I dropped that group.
I was just subscribed to too many there for awhile! lol That's easy to
do!

I've been able to get in touch with bullfrog breeders via various
websites. Since bullfrogs are bred widely for commercial meat production
(frog legs), there are a plethora of websites on care and feeding of
them.

That's how I found out that "Sigmund" was a She. lol Sexing bullfrogs
is simple. The tympanic membrane over the ears of females is only as
large as, or smaller than the eye orbit. In males, it's twice the size
or more. She has very small ears.

It is interesting to me that bullfrogs are widely bred for meat and an
adult breeding pair is worth about $50.00... and yet, due to
overpopulation in some areas, they are considered to be pests, crowding
and/or eating all the other native species of frogs so they are reviled,
and rounded up and destroyed.

I don't understand why some enterprising individual does not dedicate
themselves to gathering them for profit! It's just wierd.

They can be a pond pest in backyard ponds since they will eat fish.
But Heron's do that too. ;-)


It's funny how the crickets all swarm the food dish when they are put
in her terrarium. The pet store does not feed them so they are always
very hungry... Poor things! :-(

Also, how are you killing houseflies? I'm having a problem with them
on the sun porch and the usual stinkbait drowning bag trap is not
attracting these for some reason. I've considered Golden Mallorin
(sp?) but the last time I bought it, it did not work very well.

I used to use the stinky drowning traps too, but don't want to anymore as I
can't put them far enough away from the house here in suburbanville to get
away from the stench. I got some new flytraps, but haven't got to test them
yet as they arrived after the flies were gone. I'll have to find the name
and post the url. Remind me if I forget.

I'd appreciate it!

Oh, and the secret to avoiding the stench of those bag traps is to hang
them HIGH! If they are at least a foot or so above head level, you don't
smell them. I used to hang them from high tree branches.

Now my pet ducks control the flies, outdoors anyway!


Cheers!
--
Om.

"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." -Jack Nicholson