our non fishy friends

[chefjamesscott]

I thought I should start a thread showing our non fishy friends

I really find it funny how some pictures turn out, I just had to show off this one first. What do you get when you have a 11 year old who runs with the big boys(her dad) and stays up late at night

this
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC08515.jpg
for sure a picture to show at her wedding :ROFL:

this is rosie our 4 foot corn snake
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC08514.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC08516.jpg

the plexi enclosure right now is my chameleons home but as soon as I build the green space for lady beauty it will become rosie's home.

Here are a few shots of lady beauty my chameleon

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC06466.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC07140.jpg
her old home, I am not a fan of the fake plants and stuff so I moved her to the plexi with real plants and gave away the mesh cage
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC08536.jpg

my latest pet rescue are these two little guys, they came in this homemade hatchet job 2 blue tounge skinks
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC07894.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC07976.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC07978.jpg
i dont have a full shot of their home as I have not taken one yet. I moved them to a 30g set up with cedar bark we keep damp for them and some basking rocks in the hotside of the tank with a reptile light.

We have had them for about 2 weeks or so and finally they are starting to take food. They were on bare wood with an ashtray for a water dish. Saddly both of them have had the toes on their front legs fall off and some of the back looks to me to be a bad calcium deficiency and just all around poor housing.

My spring project is partially going to consist of making my reptiles some nice stylized digs

[Louie]

Nice I particularly like the Florida corn We have some wild ones in area but not as bright as yours rather dull. CB corns like yours show color.

[coura]

You have some really nice herps and good job on the rescue;) But one VERY important point! Cedar is TOXIC to reptiles, releases noxious vapors and can kill in the long run(stresses kidneys, liver,etc). Get rid of it rigth away and clean with soapy water. Insted use paper towels or a safer natural substrate like coconut fiber. No wonder they only started to eat now, that is a very comon simpton of what that stuff causes.

[ceeej31]

wow, i didnt know you kept herps, rosie and lady are very beautiful and those little bluies are adorable :D

[chefjamesscott]

You have some really nice herps and good job on the rescue;) But one VERY important point! Cedar is TOXIC to reptiles, releases noxious vapors and can kill in the long run(stresses kidneys, liver,etc). Get rid of it rigth away and clean with soapy water. Insted use paper towels or a safer natural substrate like coconut fiber. No wonder they only started to eat now, that is a very comon simpton of what that stuff causes.

did not know that it will be out as soon as I get home

what about peat though I can get coconut fiber at the store after work, I am also wondering about cork bark as I have a really nice big piece that is 1.5 feet wide and 3 feet long.

? is it good to have it moist a bit and what kind of real plants would you put with them

[chefjamesscott]

wow, i didnt know you kept herps, rosie and lady are very beautiful and those little bluies are adorable :D


If I knew how to do the multi quote thing I would have included this in the first post.

I sort of keep most of my zoo quiet, though, we have a regular animal habitat at our house.

lady beauty is very funny she just loves to be stroked on the head and will climb into my palm and then drop into place, she also loves to sit on top of peoples heads. people told me that chameleons really dont like attention but this one longs to be out of the cage all the time and love rapid fire cricket time where we put the crickets in a rubbermaid container and let her snap them up.

the enclosure I am going to be building for her will be like a living picture a framed in habitat that is attached to the wall as if it was a picture. Filled with live plants a nice little flowing waterfall should be interesting to do, it will be about 10 feet long and 3 feet high.

[coura]

did not know that it will be out as soon as I get home

what about peat though I can get coconut fiber at the store after work, I am also wondering about cork bark as I have a really nice big piece that is 1.5 feet wide and 3 feet long.

? is it good to have it moist a bit and what kind of real plants would you put with them
You could mix all of thouse with a bit of washed play sand to make a very confy substrate;) Its better to keep most of it only very sligthy moist with only a corner more humid. Cork tubes and peaces make great hidding places for blue tongues. As for plants most non toxic desert time will do, 2 great ones that are nearly bullet proff are Sanseveria trifasciata (both in long and short leafed tipes avaible) and Crassula ovata, Crassula arborescens, Crassula portulacoides,etc. Dont forget to keep outside any plant you plant to introduce for at least 2 mouths to make shure any pesticides are washed of by rain and make it 100% safe

[Retuks]

wow she really looks like she stayed up. haha.

i sure hope thats what it is... jk

[chefjamesscott]

so I finally decided that lady beauty my chameleon was done with fake plants and went out an got her four for her enclosure, sort of a test run on the wall habitat I want to do. I took her out to feed her after I put in the plants and her color was unlike anything I have seen yet from her. The real funny part about her is that she acts totally unlike the behaviour I was told chameleons have, she actually loves being near me and lately has been going to sleep on my hands and tries her best to not go back into the tank, except for tonight my family was up to take pics of it. It took me over 15 minutes of standing by her tank transfering her from hand to hand to finally get her to go into the tank she kept moving onto the new hand crouching down and going to sleep.

Here is some pics

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC09107.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC09108.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC09110.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC09111.jpg

and a couple of mood shots of when we got her back in

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC09116.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/DSC09117.jpg

[Amazon_Addict]

Nice setup you got there.

[AW2EOD]

Hey, chef. I didn't know you kept herps.

This is Andy (same screen name), over from cichlidmadness.

[chefjamesscott]

I have a zoo, when I am done I will have an insane year round green space with some top notch zoo quality care for my pets.

good to see ya here too

[coura]

Humm dude you arent supose to put store brougth plants straigth away in a herp tank, much less in cham tank, wich like to lik leafs for water. Why? Because store brough plants unless is stated that they are for use in terrariums, are full of fertilizers and much worse insecticides wich can make your cham very hill or even kill him. Put the tank as it was before, let the plants outside for a few mouths under the elements and only then they are safe. Also remenber yemen chams like to eat leafs so make shure all plants are non toxic

[chefjamesscott]

I will make sure to subject the plants to a thorough cleaning and might even do a repot into clay pots and new soil to make sure this does not happen. I meant to respond sooner and say thanks for the warning.

On another note I got a new camera and thought I would get busy trying it out here are some of our other non fishy friends. I started doing a refit of our house to redesign it for maximum exposure of the various pets we have so as to make sure that they have optimum communication with us and make our house so that no pet goes without human contact for a good part of the day. I will take a photo tour of the house when I am done, right now just to messy for a photoshoot.

luigi and guido, moved from my daughters bedroom to be beside my brackish tank in the living room.
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/zoo/IMGP3115.jpg

this is my sons beardie, his before home and his after home. from a 15g to a 60g that sits right beside our couch. The same 60g that was the coffin for the turtle at the museum tank that I took over maintenance of.

I traded my first beardie and it's 150g for my chameleon and have been looking since to replace it with a younger beardie that my son could grow with and came across this one for $50 all in a heck of a deal.

cheeko comes home
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2859.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2860.jpg

the substrate he was on had mould under the water dish, I cleaned up the old turtle tank and put corn substrate in so his new home looks like this

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2871.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2872.jpg

hebron holding him for the first time, this one loves to be held the first one was like 5 years old and had been left in a bedroom with little contact
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2874.jpg

some shots of cheeko and the family
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2942.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2943.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2944.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2952.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP3122.jpg

I redid the blue tounge skinks environment as well as my gecko's
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2904.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP2879.jpg

when we cleaned out my son's fire belly toad tank he did a nice rearrangement of it forgot to take a pic of the full tank but here is one of the toads
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP3136.jpg

We also have a aviary in our house, I took one of the bedrooms and converted it as a free flight space for my birds. So last night we were at petland getting some various fish foods and my son hebron kept coming over to me to tell me about this special bird they were holding, the third time I took note of a tone in his voice and decided that I needed to go see this bird.

It had just come in that morning and was the first time a tiel had been very friendly with being held. I have never seen a tiel with this coloration and one look in my daughter christianna's eyes told me this bird was goin home with us. So now baby angel has been set up in her room on her dresser in my medium parrot cage. It's wings are clipped so not the right time to give it free flight.

Here are the pics of the whole bird adventure
christianna by the tiel pen in the store
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP3041.jpg
christianna as we just got in the car with her bird NOTHING BETTER THAN A LOOK LIKE THIS
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP3043.jpg
baby angel coming out of the box after it's cage has been made ready
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP3044.jpg
a ready made hand trained baby bird sweeeeeeet
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP3047.jpg

whoever the breeder is they must have taken very clear interest in this bird as it totally nuzzles in to give kisses and loves to ride on the shoulder. It has no yellow or red of any kind on it only white grey and dark grey, I have never seen this color mutation and the store said they have never had one like it either.

[coura]

Humm... dude first of you have some great pets and kids, love the hairless rats;) Second sorry to pick on you again but you just do make ocasional very bad choices regarding material, not trying to be a jerk, just trying to help :D Now on the suject: corn knob , wich you are using on your beardy and skink tank, has to be one of the most dangerous substrates on todays herp industry. It is indigestable, your reps will pick up a bit here and there over a long time and one day you wake up to see your once healty reps dont eat a thing, they get weaker, you dont know what to do, you take them to a vet, the vet fells something abnormaly hard on the vent area, he takes a X-ray to find your reptiles digestive sistem is absolutley filled with korn knobs, surgery wil be needed and in a happy ending you will endup with a few thousand dollars less and live pets, in a bad end they will die:nilly:NEVER EVER USE KORN KNOPS (and wallnut shell, worse substrates ever), the only animals for wich they are safe is scorpions and other land invertebrates. A good looking substrate for your beardy would be playsand. For your skinks either paper towels or a natural one I already told you. Change that thing asap and spread the word, trust me, you dont want to see what comes of that

[chefjamesscott]

that is why I have started a thread I have a bag of sand here I will redo the cages as soon as I get home thanks so much will definitely do that asap

chef

[coura]

Good;) I frankly think we can live without corn knops, wallnut, calci sand and hot rocks, no need to have them around, should stop producing them

[crazy4pearl]

Here are the pics of the whole bird adventure
christianna by the tiel pen in the store
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP3041.jpg
christianna as we just got in the car with her bird NOTHING BETTER THAN A LOOK LIKE THIS
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP3043.jpg
baby angel coming out of the box after it's cage has been made ready
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP3044.jpg
a ready made hand trained baby bird sweeeeeeet
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP3047.jpg

whoever the breeder is they must have taken very clear interest in this bird as it totally nuzzles in to give kisses and loves to ride on the shoulder. It has no yellow or red of any kind on it only white grey and dark grey, I have never seen this color mutation and the store said they have never had one like it either.[/quote]

thats me and my bird baby

[coura]

Could be "our non fishy happy tree friends":ROFL::D

[chefjamesscott]

so I switched out that substrate the very same evening as per your advice and replaced it with some #7 grade sand.

The other day I found an add for a person lookin to rehome a albino ferret named bandit, so since we have 3 already and a very nice large cage 5 feet tall 3.5 wide by 3.5 wide I figured sure we got room.

Here are a few shots

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/zoo/IMGP3446.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/zoo/IMGP3441.jpg
in the bathroom mirror

a couple of when syd woke up to investigate the new person

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/zoo/IMGP3432.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/zoo/IMGP3434.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/zoo/IMGP3438.jpg

and of course bandit lookin in the tank thinkin I could really eat that I could so close yet so far lololololol
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/zoo/IMGP3431.jpg

[chefjamesscott]

well I am glad to say that I was able to multiply another ferret keepers househould by rehoming sugar to a home that used to have only 1 ferret. sugar kept getting out of the cage and I did not want to take the chance that anything would happen to her so gladdly she is now a fellow housemate to a now not lonely fellow ferret.

the petcetera here in regina is shutting down and I went in to see what kind of deals were to be had and they had 2 remaining finches all alone, so I bought them and took them home. since these pics I have moved them to a much larger small bar parrot cage

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP4262.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/birds/IMGP4256.jpg

it was very wonderfull to hear these birds singing with joy at being outside albeit in a cage but outside and no longer kept in a closet. another pet store here is totally walking away from selling finches and it looks like they will offer me a good deal on a group buy if i take the remaining stock they have 5 blue head, 3 society and 4 java rice.

this weekend, the lady that we got spike our hairless and nala our powder puff from gave me her love bird and parrotlet, her granddaughter was terrorizing them, so in the aviary they went and it was very interesting to watch their hesitation to leave their cage when we opened the doors and lid and gave them their freedom. I will take a few pics of them and post them later.

[deathtoll]

thats a very nice colored skink

[deathtoll]

hmmm umm sorry wrong page

[deathtoll]

oops nm sorry again...im new to the site and got confused...those are very nice colored herps though...ive been thinking about getting a blue tongued skink.Is that what you have?and how has it been to have?

[chefjamesscott]

the blue tounge skinks are lots of fun nice personality, they were a rehome from a bad place. saddly we lost one last week. they came from living in a bare wood no sand enclosure.

on another note, I was able to rehome my 2 ferrets due to allergies in my house and traded them for 5 baby corn snakes witha 10g reptile set up

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP5127.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP5128.jpg

I also have a friend who traded me a very nice tank for a conure parrot and I rehomed my quaker with him as well in trade for 2 sandfire skinks

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/rept%20and%20amphip/IMGP4871.jpg

[coura]

Thouse are really nice sand fish and one of the few reptiles you can use sand without hazzards. However there are a few very important points about your baby corns. First you must house them apart from each other in small terrariums, avoid big enclosures and more then one by enclosure. Second they are not good reptiles to keep on sand, swich to kichen paper.