New Eastern Water Skink Rescued

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CooperDragon

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What's with your little ones and the obsession with the dish cupboard? Seems like a favorite spot :lol:
 

kingofnobbys

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8:30pm and the little skink is wide awake and exploring the new digs ( the skink penthouse ) and yes , it's discovered the food dish and had a feast of mealworms and crickets , ignored the BSFL though.

Here they are :
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My old 10L hospital tub has been retired. Now have a 27L tub all set up.

It's a 13W UVB100 in a nano hood fixed under lid, heat pad under.
UVB measured 180 microW / sq.cm about 5" from the bulb, so will be OK level for an eastern water skink who is about 1/2 grown.
 

kingofnobbys

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Named him Cheakie.
Had his first weigh in today , wasn't very impressed with being grabbed and deposited in a little tub.

He weighs in at 18.6g so about 1/2 that of Fluffy.
 

kingofnobbys

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Cheakie (the juvenile male) shed on Friday.
Weighed him again, he's gained 30% in body mass since I recovered him from amongst the mugs and crockery , and is noticeably longer inside the little 1L clickclak I use to weigh him, he's grown at least 1".
He is starting to trust me, doesn't try to get away from my hand when I replace the water, restock his fooddish , or pick him up in the little cardboard tube he likes to hang out in during the day when he's not digging into the paper towels , or basking, or soaking in the water dish - watches me and even lets me pat him sometimes.

Gutzy shed yesterday, she is not keen on being picked up , so I don't force the issue , this will only reinforce her fear , she'll come around and start being more relaxed about my hand being near her when she's ready.
She does study me especially when I have Fluffy out for QT and fluffy playtime and handfeeding (Fluffy has decided she wants me to hand feed her lately, eagerly takes crickets, mealworms (pupae and worms) from my fingers and licks my fingers clean afterwards).
She's not very interested in the bluetongues who come out for daily roam abouts and snuggles , but is fascinated with Cleo and Caesar.

Gutzy and Cheakie both love the smell of people food, and both seem to really like TV when it's on.
 

kingofnobbys

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Thought I'd lost Cheakie this afternoon.
Couldn't see him in either his cardboard tube hides, his little converted round tub house hide, or under the paper towels when I changed his water, and topped up his food dish with mealworms and disabled crickets.
I was starting to think he'd somehow climbed up and pushed his way through the small gap the nano-hood cable makes under the rim of the lid.

Then I heard a little rustling sound and coming from his tub lid which was on top Fluffy and Gutzy's tub and he peaked out from behind the reflector plate of the nano-hood. Cheakie little bugger had somehow climbed / leapt up there and curled up behind the reflector .

He was none the worse for the experience , the 13W UVB100 is not real hot.

This was a new one to me.... I've had beardies who were fascinated by their 26W UVB200 in a dome reflector hung pendulum style from rearing tub lids, but never had a lizard manage to get inside a nano hood before.
Though I have heard of smaller arborial pythons and frogs and geckos doing this.

Fluffy has decided she like's crawling under my T-shirt sleeves , she spent 30mins there after a feed of BSFL and mealworms and some funtime. Longest she's ever sat still on me. I think the replacement 7.1 KW-COOL / 8 KW-HEAT we had installed today was too cold her , even I had goosebumps after running it for an hour set to 24 degC.
 

kingofnobbys

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I think Gutzy and Cheakie set each other off even though they are in separate tubs and the tubs are stacked so they can't see each other.
One or the other starts scratching at the corner or bottom edge of the tub it's in , and the other promptly does the same.

They are both very goofy and acrobatic and highly active and really nutty ( very funny to watch sometimes with some of contortions they get up to , and how they try to interact with me ( to get my attention ).

Mealwhile Fluffy is very laid back and just likes her usual thing of having very long soaks in her nice warm water dish and has definitely decided she want me to handfeed her , she'll visit her food dish to see what on off , and then stares at me and crawls ontop the front small Hubba hut waits for me take the hint.
I think some of this is she wants to have a break from her very active and nutty tank mate Gutzy and she wants some daddy QT too.
 

kingofnobbys

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Gutzy my new big girl still hasn't had any babies , she's really good in the tooth , lots of small meals each day , can't long now .
She's still very skittish , I think she's had a fright at some stage with something nasty trying to pounce on her or swoop down at her as she really doesn't like my sliding the big skink tub lid off , dashed off to hide either under her shared grotto or into the shared " home made skink hide " .
She does seem to like interacting with me , but under her own terms, ie with me on the other side of the plastic , she's got a little ritual now that she gets very active again about 8:30pm and has her visit to the food dish , the she stands up in the corner of the tub an looks at me ( if I don't pay attention she then strays stranding there and scratches at the plastic in the corner to get my attention and wont stop and drop down until I speak to her and respond by also by scratching with my finger tips the plastic where she is ).

Meanwhile Fluffy my old girl has decided she want to come out and have some funtime and for me to give her 5 * service my handing her crickets , mealworm lavae and pupae , bsf lavae to her with my fingers, she show how much she appreciates her special treatment by licking my finger tips clean. She's a spolt girl.

Cheakie has started crawling onto my hand when I refresh his water and top up his food dish. He no longer wriggles and squeaks and threat displays ( by threatening to bite me ) when I gab him to put him in the little weight tub or when I'm changing out his bedding because it's soiled and mucky or wet from his being nutty in his water dish (loves his water dish !!). Likes his 29L rearing tub and will soon out grow it , so I'll be moving him into a 120L tub about Xmas.
Cheaky has gained 10g , so nearly doubled in size , now 26g , I can see a noticeable increase in length since was rescued , he's thriving.

There is now a resident wild water skink living in the house too, it's little juvenile , and lives behind / under the lounge. We've seen several times , always makes a dash from under the lounge if we come too close.
 

kingofnobbys

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Cheakie seems to warming to me, let me pet him on the head tonight.

Gutzy is still very skittish but at least she "interacts" with me from a safe distance and no longer hides from me , ( need to build that front opening modular multibay enclosure soon …. still waiting for the special timber ( 180mm x 19mm Tasmanian Oak DAR - furniture grade ) to arrive ) …. I think she'll be less skittish In a front opening viv , no more looming over top ( which she's obviously frightened of) , and I think will become more approachable when I build a front opening viv for her and Fluffy.
I'll likely build a 1.2m x 0.6m W x 0.3m H for the water skinks, and try reintroducing Cheakie to the two girls now he's a bit bigger. If Gutzy still objects to his presence , I'll simply partition off with some water resistant wall paneling an area 0.4m long for Gutzy and let the two big females have the bigger area.

The dragons get their new CONNECTIT - Al & Acrylic dig's first though , as Caesar is getting too big to stay in the 120L rearing tub and the old plywood 4ft x 2ft x 2ft tanks that I had Puff and Rex in were sent to the tip last week ( part of the bi-annual bulk waste collection , can't horde everything and they were 8 years old and starting to fall apart ( more bother trying to repair then they were worth ).
 

CooperDragon

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A front opening enclosure may help out quite a lot. Pretty soon you'll need to build an entire extra wing on your house for all of your guests! =)
 

kingofnobbys

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CooperDragon":2hi3k1sr said:
A front opening enclosure may help out quite a lot. Pretty soon you'll need to build an entire extra wing on your house for all of your guests! =)

I've a 149L tub full of components to build my 10" f4 astrographic Newtonian , a flat packed custom made plywood dobsonian mount for my old 10" f4.6 newronian (in a big box) , a 120 L tub full of bits and pieces for the new beardie house and the new skink house , under that I've got a 120L tub full of telescope paraphenia ( Naglers , big binos ( 20x80 and 15x100 ) , astroimaging stuff etc , and stacked sundry boxes ( big postal boxes ) full of offs and ends , as well as two 90L stacked tubs full of lizard furnature and spare lizard light fittings ), which take up about 5m x 0.5m of floor space in the living area , all of which will vanish ( be emptied, or moved to the garage , or into the locked up observatory when the new enclosures and the roll off roof observatory are built.

So in the new year there will be a few more major projects
1) paving about 22 sq-m of yard between the 9x9m slab and the new raised beds & returfing the remnant of the bar dirt ( and fill the last 3m x 1.5m raised bed with garden soil - I was short by 1 cu-m or one bulkabag so finishing the garden beds will have to wait til I'm ready for my course sand paving sand bulk delivery to create a flat firm bed for the 400x400mm and 300x300mm concrete pavers , silly paying for two deliveries just to get on bulkabag of soil delivered).
2) 8m x 4.5m deck ( steel structure, hardiedeck surface )
3) 3m x 2m roll off roof observatory ( prefab steel wall frames and steel traverse beams and steel roof trusses ) and permanently recommission and polar align my Vixen Atlux GEM ( for the 10" astrograph to go ontop permanently ).
4) assemble and commission the 10" astrograph in above observatory
5) solar panels on the garage and the house ( with GelCell deep discharge storage ).

Then I'll be able put my feet up and maybe look at buying a boat and perhaps new carpet and a new lounge.
 

kingofnobbys

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I finally have another skink who likes a belly tickle.

My first rescued water skink ( Lucky ) loved a good belly tickle , would lay back in my hand when I started ticking his tummy so far that he's literally be laying his back on by fingers, and if I stopped he'd be patting my tickle finger to tell me " more ".

The other day when I was weighing the younger lizards , I took the opportunity to have some quality time with Cheakie, and after a brief objection to being gabbed and placed on my tummy in my cupped hand he settled and I saw I had access to his belly , so I started a gentle tickle and he really liked it and started laying back in my hand.

I guess he's warming to me.

Next time I'll have a camera handy.

He's also got a thing for black soldier flies , not so keen on the lavae , but really loves the flies, almost as much as he likes crickets and mealworms.
 

kingofnobbys

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Cheakie is on the loose again in the kitchen, he as napping inside one of his cardboard paper towel roll tubes when I was lifting him out to weigh him (in the tube) and he either slipped out as he was very sleepy and relaxed or suddenly woke when I lifted him in the tube and leaped out onto the carpet and duely trotted off to explore .

This is the third time he's done this to me. Last time I recovered him a couple days later.
Grandson stay over starts in a week , so I'm hoping he'll be safely back in his tub before then.

I opted not to chase him but instead have deposited a couple of tubes in strategic spot in the hope he'll crawl into on so I can relatively easy with minimum stress to him put him back into his tank.
a 2" mailer tube (one end blocked - was full of crickets at one time , smells like crickets so might go in it looking for a meal of crickets , and his fav bed-tube ( full of his scent so he'll be relaxed in it and will feel safe ).

He wasn't in escape mode when he ended up on the floor, just switched to explore mode and was just crawling about here and there tasting things and looking at them and all about.
Had we tried to chase him I think he would likely become very scared and loose his trust of us.

He's now nearly as long as the skinny mailing tube I've put on floor in the hope of recatching him ( they are 42cm , he looked only a few inches shorter ( 35cm long in total ) …. really thrived !! he's grown to become a big boy !

He's been into his tube ( he has a fav tube that he likes to sleep in that's on the floor next to the rearing tub the two dragons are in ) but crawled out when my wife came to see him before I could get to a position where I could block both ends with my hands to pick him and tube up. 10pm here now and I can still hear him moving about behind things ( exploring ).

I'm betting he'll show up at brekky to great my wife , so I've set aside a tub for her to deposit over top of him if he's an good spot like a corner unless she sees him peaking out of the mailer tube or his tube.
I've left his emptied food dish on the floor near his fav tube and a 4" mailer tube lid with some water in it ( in the hope the smell of the food dish and the water might be enough to draw him out tomorrow morning say ) my wife reports he's always up and "talking to her" at brekky. Very food oriented little skink , does the same to me at lunch and diner too.
Human food smells are apparently very yummy to him.

If he encounters the resident G.Dubia gecko it'll not be impressed and likely get a fright . I can't see Cheakie deciding the gecko is diner , too big I think.

Watch this space for updates.
 
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