Broly the new super saiyan beardie

It seems like once most beardies get used to being hand fed, they don't want to bother chasing their own bugs anymore -- not if they can get their human slaves to do it for them. :roll:

Rechargeable batteries for "critical systems" are a nice thing to have when your power goes out, especially when it's cold. You can use human body heat to keep reptiles warm for a while (in other words, cuddle them), but I guess there's not much you can do about fish tanks if your water filtration system goes down, although I don't have much experience with fish. We had a little tetra for a little while, but only because my husband tried to feed it to our corn snake when he was little and wasn't eating anything else. I was still working then and my husband had the day off, so I wasn't there to keep him out of mischief. I came home and the fish was in a little deli cup staring at Squirmles, and Squirmles was sprawled out on the bottom of the tank, disinterestedly staring back. Not gonna happen. :| I could have told my husband that... Not a garter snake. I had a pretty good idea that the fish wasn't going to last very long without proper water chemistry, so the next day we bought a little one gallon tank with a little filter, and a book on the care and feeding of fish, and set it up next to the snake tank. I remember thinking "Ok, now we have a fish." and having dark fantasies about acquiring a whole menagerie of tiny little live animals that Squirmles wouldn't eat to learn how to take care of. "We can't keep doing this," I thought. "I have a full time job." (At least I did, back then. That was about 15 years ago, just before I burned out the second time and had to quit my last job.) A few days later my husband tried to feed the fish to the snake again. Squirmles still wasn't interested but the fish was traumatized and didn't make it. That's the extent of my experience with fish. Fortunately, we managed to get Squirmles to eat a mouse a few days later, and he's been eating frozen thawed mice ever since, except during his annual spring hunger strikes when he apparently wants a lady snake instead of a mouse.

Sounds like your lizards are all healthy and either growing slowly or maintaining. I don't weigh and measure Puff because his size is pretty much stable. I have a little scale but I don't think it's accurate enough to give me useful information where the reptiles are concerned, so they only get weighed at the vet's.

I was surprised that Puff came out of his "burrito" almost as soon as I turned on the lights this morning, and gave me The Look ("Do I get my Good Morning cuddle today?"), especially since it started off cloudy this morning, but it's starting to clear up and looking pretty nice now, pretty much like the weather forecast said... what a coincidence. :wink:

Hey,

It's warm but cloudy some wind too. It's humid also.
I like my aquatics, learned my lesson I will always have a battery for them. Well, if it dies..nothing I can do but buy a new filter. One thing I could never have is turtles or goldfish..they're both messy and require double filtration.
I had a few tetras neons to be exact. My guppies didnt like them and killed all 10 of them by stressing them. So Buster and Montana Max lead the pack. It's a Tiny Toons tank! I have Plucky Duck and Calamity Coyote too. Evi demon guppies LOL. They leave my assorted angels alone.

On to the dragons, Kane is asleep. Hes brumating...hes healthy just dead asleep. I made sure hes alive. Weight is good. Hes part german giant so hes 24" long. Hes also 1 yr old so I guess all that growing made him tired or something.
It's summer Idk what his mindset is. Hes gonna be very unhappy in winter. He can't get out it's too cold. Whatever his choice.
Broly WILL NOT bask if his croc skull is not at the front of the tank. He likes to put his front feet on it and push himself up. It's like a perch. I realized I moved it and never moved it back and he sat two days not basking...I thought he was going to brumate. He ate but didnt bask. I figured out hus issue. Tom checked out temps, Uvb changed next month though I can't use Uvb stupid effin ballast..couldnt figure it out. We finally noticed he was sitting across from the skull. He perches himself on the food bowl too. Crazy loon. Well we gotta go outside ballast should come in tomorrow. We have 6 just in case. Tom's handy in electrition so he can fix the ballast.
Some sun peeks through so we'll probably be out for 30 minutes.

Looks like it's going to be another nice day here too. If it continues to warm up we might get a chance to take Puff outside for a little while over the weekend.

Neon tetras are really pretty (and well named). I've seen them in pet stores but I have absolutely no experience when it comes to keeping multiple fish in a tank and having to worry about who is going to bully who.

Different beardies seem to be all over the map when it comes to brumation, and some of them seem to have their biological clocks set for the southern hemisphere. If I remember correctly, a couple of Deb's beardies are trying to do the same thing Kane is doing. Maybe they know the days are getting shorter now even though summer's far from over (although it effectively could be over any day now here in Alaska, regardless of what the calendar says :roll: ). Kane is probably old enough and healthy enough for a little brumating if you can't "talk" him out of it. :wink:

Puff was sick in the middle of the winter in 2014-2015 (when he was first diagnosed with adenovirus) and I didn't know how much of his loss of appetite and extra sleeping was due to the illness and how much was due to the season, so after a little conference with the folks at the vet's office I decided to extend his artificial photoperiod by leaving his lights on for a few extra hours every day, in an effort to convince him that it wasn't time to brumate if that's what he was trying to do. It took a long time but he eventually pulled through and got better, although his appetite has never come back up to what it was before the illness, and his weight has stabilized a little below it's highest point. That's probably the best we can hope for.

Then he went hormonal right after the winter solstice the following year, so his biological clock was off by about 3 months, possibly making up for lost time. The craziness happened in the spring this year, so I guess we're more or less back on track, although we still haven't had enough "normal" years with him to know what that looks like. He hasn't seemed to be much into brumation since then, so the next time he gets anorexic and sleepy, we're probably going to be likely to conclude that it's due to illness and not brumation, so he'll be liable to end up seeing the vet.

We're both lucky to have husbands that are good at fixing electrical stuff. My husband is a certified computer wiz (has an associate degree in computer technology plus a number of industry certs), not an electrician as such, but he knows his way around wires and cables and voltages and electric components -- it kind of goes with the territory. It's nice not to have to call the "geek squad" when the computer acts up. I have my own personal system administrator ("Sweeeeetie -- could you please fix this stupid thing?" and he does his magic and I don't have to deal with it :mrgreen

It's funny how bearded dragons get used to things being in certain places in their tanks, and then get all bent out of shape if their human slaves move things around. Puff spends most of his time on his basking platform, and I suppose I'd probably get some serious dirty looks if I moved it for him. Usually no reason to do that except for cleaning, and then one of us entertains him while the other puts the stuff in the tank back together, so by the time we put him back on his favorite basking spot, everything is back in place the way he likes it.

Hey,

Yup, Kane is down for the count. Not eating but got all the stools out. Good thing he has a Reptisun 10 T5 tube specially if he wants to sleep in summer. Uvb tubes are great for winter up here. Makes up for lack of sun.

Broly's still up and eating, passing stools and very much goes outside and meets the mailman sometimes. Our ballasts came in all 6 of them. Spent $400 on them theyre expensive when you order more than a couple. Tom will install it tonight when he gets home. During Broly's 45 minutes he meets delivery people if they come. He meets kids too. Broly ate and basked so it was the skull.

My sister's son, Jack is here and tonight after installing the ballast we're going to mom and dad. Jack needs to see grammy and granpa too. It's a BBQ just cause. So everyone is gonna be at a cookout. Broly will stay home with everyone as it will be 7pm. Good thing we have timers as we'll be home around 10pm. It won't be too exhausting as it's family.

At least you should have enough ballasts to last you for a while in case any more of your light fixtures go on the blink. I suppose it was probably cheaper per unit to order a half a dozen of them than one or two at a time.

Sounds like the family BBQ will be fun for you all. My husband's church is having a big picnic tomorrow and we're trying to figure out how to squeeze it in with our usual Saturday plans for critter care and the honest attempt to do the house cleaning that usually fails even when we don't go anywhere. Even if we manage to get there, it might be too big of a crowd for me to handle for too long, but we'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, we're planning for him to do the run to the pet store tonight for crunchy creepy crawly critters -- crickets or roaches depending on what they have in stock. The local Petco usually gets their shipment in on Fridays.

Hey,

Fri is busy. Cleaned bug bins, cleaned up some lizard tanks, change water in pocket pets water bottle and fish tanks.
I fed Jack lunch, my sister took care of breakfast. BBQ took care of dinner. Tomorrow the other lizards. I took Jack to the park so he can skateboard. He also skateboard a bit at mom's house before dinner. He's good at it and he's 6 yrs old! He doesn't need help. I bet when hes 10 yrs old, he'll be really good for a skate park. My sister won't take him to one yet.

At my mom's house, one of her cats were hunting a poor sweet garter snake. Me, being a reptile lover, moved mom's cat away and saved the snake. I would never kick an animal away!!! I moved him. Grabbed a cup the snake gladly went in. I took him to a bush with trees. He's saved for today. He has trees and bushes for cover unless the cat went in to find him. I don't think he did. I had to save the snake!! He eats mice too. I love snakes just can't feed frozen or live rats...other people can do that if they want but I couldn't. I'd keep the rats LOL. Snakes are suited for people who dont mind feeding rats/mice to them.

Saturdays are usually our busiest day because that's my husband's only day off and that's when we try to do all the critter care and housework that I'm usually not up to doing during the week. My poor husband has to do his job plus most of mine. Then my husband's church takes up half of his day on Sunday. I go with him if I feel like getting out of the house, or stay home if I don't feel up to it. Then we're usually pretty tired so we often veg out in front of the TV or take a nap for the rest of the weekend. The reptiles pretty much do the same. That's why I sometimes don't get caught up with my email until the middle of the next week... :wink:

Sounds like your nephew is a natural born "athlete". Some kids just seem to be good at stuff like that from the start. And some of the rest of us (including me), not so much.

For a minute there, I thought you were going to end up with a new pet garter snake. :mrgreen: I hope the little guy can stay clear of the cat in the yard.

It's kind of hard for me to feed mice to our snake too -- heck, I even have a hard time feeding live bugs to the beardie if I let myself think about it too much. Fortunately, our snake has been settling for frozen thawed mice ever since the first few weeks we had him, but he had been started on live ones, so his first meal at our place had to be a live baby mouse, and I never want to go through anything like that again. Without going into all the gory details, I'll just say that I felt sorry for the mouse but I was rooting for the snake. The things we do for our reptiles...

New batch of crickets, and "Daddy" had to resort to catching crickets and holding them up to the klutzy beardie's nose, and he still had a hard time eating them. We still managed a decent meal with the crickets and some roaches and even a few bites of greens. Daddy had also picked him some dandelions and clover from the backyard, since we're almost out of collard greens. We have a pretty nice beardie salad growing in our backyard, but it's raining again today so Daddy's going to the grocery store after work -- not a very nice day to be out in the yard picking greens. Nice day for zoning out under the heat lamps, which is what both Puff and Squirmles are doing at the moment.

Hey,

Our friend sent the cobra lily today. He was terribly busy with other orders and couldnt get to ours. It's here either tomorrow or Thu. Im betting on Thu. We have perlite and peat moss totally 100% organic. I haven't repotted ir transplant my venus in a long time..three years! I hope I remember what I did three years ago...shouldn't be too hard..gotta fill the pot.

Broly hasn't passed stool since Sat. He tried Sun but a bird overhead scared him so he hasn't gone since. He should soon, he eats like a race horse. Kane woke up from brumation apparently. He's feisty and always eating like before. Kane and the four leos passed a stool, normal. Capaldi went too. We're waiting on Broly (wonder how long we're waiting since the bird incident), tokay and gargoyle geckos.

Oh no, I would never keep a wild animal. I would nurse it then release when it's ready. I remember being 14, my sister was 9 my brother was 5. We rescued a bird who was thrown from the nest by some tree cutter doing his job. He's an i d i o t... Anyway, this baby bird could not fly had feathers. We syringed fed it water and gave it worms. He was ready to go..we drove to a park with other birds. My sister was upset we had to say goodbye to Runt. She named him. We let him go and we walked to the car he hopped behind us chirping. We stopped turned around and he was there looking at us like "where ya going?" We told him "look birds!" He looked and flew off in the direction of them. They accepted him too so we knew he'd be fine. We drove home telling my sister he belongs outside not with people. She accepted it but didn't like it. Now shes 25 and has a son, Jack. I could never keep a wild animal. People would brand me with insulting names keeping him so I let him go. It was the right thing to do.

Puff's last poop was about the same time as Broly's, but that's not unusual for Puff. He's all over the map with the frequency of his poops. Our vet once told us that if we don't at least see some urate in 2 weeks, then it's cause for concern, but Puff seldom does just urate without a poop to go with it -- seems to be a "package deal". I've canceled a number of tentative vet appointments in the last several years with the words, "Never mind. We got a poop." :roll: Hopefully Broly didn't get too badly "scared sh*tless" by the bird.

A warm bath and a gentle belly massage seems to work for Puff sometimes, but now I've also got Repashy Grub Pie as an alternative. But we decided not to give him too much when he's not constipated, unless we get into a situation where we can't get live bugs and fresh greens for a while and that's all we have to feed him -- that was the original idea. In that case, we would probably have to put up with things getting a little messy. :wink:

Hopefully you'll be able to get your new cobra lily all tucked in to a new pot and comfy after its journey.

It's really hard to nurse a wild animal back to health and then let it go, especially for a child. You get attached and you just want to keep taking care of them and making sure they're safe, and you can't do that anymore once you turn them loose. Even adult wildlife biologists who rescue and rehabilitate injured wild animals have a hard time when they have to let them go, even though they know that means they've been successful in their efforts.

My husband used to find garter snakes in the yard when he was a little kid and visited his grandfather in California, and his grandfather would tell him to just let them go and leave them alone...

BTW, I finally got to see one of my favorite Dr Who reruns that I had never been able to see all the way through before -- "Planet of the Ood". I love the Ood. Wouldn't mind having one or two of them to help me with the housework, but only if the Ood were willing and hadn't been surgically mutilated and mistreated and forced into slavery, although I suppose I'd have to make sure they had a nice pocket to put their little brain in so they could have both their hands free when they needed to... :laughing6:

Hey,

Plant comes tomorrow. I did figure it was Thu. My two venus caught bugs!
One has a spider and the other caught some flying insect. Im not entirely sure what it is. I do have to water them, they're getting a bit dry. I do have the pot ready for it will have to wet it a bit before it comes.

Broly had a messy stool luckily it was laundry day and we don't mind washing his "bathroom area". It's a carpet Idk why it's still in there I should get rid of it. I have tiles. So carpet thrown in washing machine after rising off the stool which wasn't smelly. You'd think so...

The two geckos passed stools. Broly has infrequent stools too. Sometimes its everyday, every other or up to 6 days. I never had him go a week.

I do have to renew food stamps tomorrow so hopefully the plant comes early so I can tuck it into its pot. If not, my sister will stop by before I leave and pick up the package. I gave her instructions how to plant it. She'll follow it well.
Im sure Jack will help his mom. He knows how to read after all. I have grub pie too in case I ever run out of adult bugs.

Puff and Broly both -- Puffie had a little accident on the bottom of his tank in the middle of the day yesterday while I was taking a nap, so I had a little mess to clean up when I woke up. I guess it's just his way of reminding me that I need to haul my fat lazy body out of bed and do at least some of my share of the work around here once in a while.

Where do you keep your carnivorous plants? Indoors so they can catch the bugs that get in the house or outside so they can have their pick of all the wild ones?

Hey,

Got my plant and it's not happy it has brown spots. The roots almost fell off and it was really soggy. I asked him whats wrong with it? He said it's ok it still has roots so it should grow. He added its also stressed and those pitchers may die. Well a lot of good that does me, most are brown! He'll refund if it dies, it just don't look its best. As with any new animal, let it go through stress for a week and go from there. It's a nice plant I hope it makes it through stress.
It's an angry plant for sure.

As for your question, I take them out every morning and bring them in after sun down. They get at least 9 hours in the sun. Too cold at night for them. They catch outside and inside. Cobra lily is planted a little sideways..what was my sister doing? She told me it's roots fell off (some) and she did what she could for the rest of the roots. It's covered loosely under the soil. I would redo it but it might die. I don't wanna stress it. It might grow sideways LOL.

All lizards are fine.

Sounds like your cobra lily had a rough trip and not off to the best of starts in its new home , but it also sounds like you've got a pretty good plan to just leave it the way your sister planted it, take the best care of it that you know how, and hope that it can recover. At least your lizards are all doing well.

The usual around here. I got tired yesterday afternoon and I was half asleep when my husband got home and couldn't even talk to him coherently about giving Squirmles and Puff their baths, but he took care of everything anyway. I was awake enough by the time Puff was ready for his "after bath" cuddle, but he was pretty much zoned out at bedtime and didn't seem to want to be disturbed, so we just covered him up and turned off the lights and called it a night. Squirmles usually curls up in his Kleenex box (an empty Kleenex box is one of his favorite hides, which works out well -- with the condition of my sinuses, I keep him well supplied :wink: ). A more or less typical evening at the Bailey's...

Hey,

Ok so the cobra lily is still with us. I read that in 3 weeks it will die or live. After the 3 week period, we'll see how it is. So I'll count the next three Thu. My friend was very unhappy that it's not in the best condition. He says it could have been the traveling that caused the shoots to get old (what the spots mean) and wither away. Again, a lot of those plus some new shoots. Tom planted it straight up with moving it as little as possible. It's straight up now. It seems that it's happy indoors for now to relieve stress. My venus are always happy outside. Cobra lily (Arbok) going outside we think Sun is ok so it has today and tomorrow to just chill. My nephew named it Arbok from Pokemon. It's clever it's cobra spelled backwards except with K not C.

Busy Fri except adding a cobra lily on top. Roots don't stay cool it will die. Cleaned bins as usual, fish tanks and fed the day reptiles. I have to feed my snails..it's harder than it looks.

Well, I guess now that the cobra lily has a name, it's a member of the family and you're all just going to have to do your best to help it survive. If it at least has some new shoots, maybe that's a good sign that it hasn't given up yet.

What do snails eat? My guess would be some kind of green or veggie stuff, at least that's what land snails seem to eat. But if I remember correctly, you have aquatic ones?

My husband's at Costco, so I'm hoping I'll have enough energy to put all the groceries away when he brings them home. At least I don't have to worry about finding something for dinner. Trip to Costco = pizza -- his favorite. And one large one makes for an extra meal or two for just the two of us. :mrgreen: