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Wille View Profile |
Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
(Noodles is a female, and Jim is a male) Noodles is significantly older than Jim, which may or may not have any bearing on the answer to my question. I have, for the first time, cleaned out my lizard cage, which was heavily adorned with little lizard poops. Prior to this event, my fence lizards were avid eaters, consuming about two to three medium-sized crickets each daily. Now I find that my fence lizards are sluggish and lazy, lying about a lot more than they used to. While Jim, it would seem, has still retained his hearty appetite, Noodles has not. I am beginning to worry, as it has been days since she has last eaten. She does not move much, often sitting in the same spot and not moving at all for extended periods of time. She does not usually have her eyes open during such times. Sometimes, when I check on Noodles, I find her slumped over her water bowl, the tip of her face submerged in the water, and her eyes closed. Seconds, even minutes later, I find that she is still in this position. Very recently, I just saw her eyes bulge, which makes me even more worried. I have also noted that she looks a lot thinner! Her legs are a lot skinner, and her arms, too. The sides of her lower back also seem a bit sunken in... I have asked several people, including a reptile breeder at my local pet store. I was told that my fence lizard was depressed, not wishing to live in captivity. He told me my best bet would be to release Noodles back into the wild. I do not really want to do this, as I have captured the lizard myself and grown attached for her. However, I fear that she might die. Someone else told me that she might have grown bored of eating crickets all the time, and wishes for more variety. I was told to get her mil-worms. Is this a possibility? Please advise me on what to do. I am very worried about Noodles, and want to do whatever I can to ensure her health and longevity. Some specifications about my tank: I have them in a five gallon tank. The tank has a bendable branch that winds its way around the entirety of the tank, perfect for climbing. It has sand on the bottom of it, a water bowl, and a rock with a hollowed out bottom so that she can hide in it. I also have a heating pad against the back wall of the tank, and a full spectrum bulb. I am wondering, does the full spectrum bulb work as well as any other bulb for reptiles? Thank you in advance for your help! |
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| 08/22/09 03:35pm |
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Wille View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061960 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
Before, when she was still energetic, she would often stand herself up in front of the glass and wave her fingers wildly against it. Then she would loose her balance and fall over, and go about her business. |
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| 08/22/09 03:38pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061960 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
Clean lizard poo out of tank at least every two days, if not everyday. You could be feeding your lizards too much, and Noodles may be constipated. Let her relax in a tupperware container with luke warm water. Just enough so that she won’t drown, but yet it will warm her belly and help with digestion. Her eyes are bulging because she’s trying to get the dead skin around her eyes to come off. It’s natural. Mist your lizards daily with water to cool them off and help with sheds. Are you gut loading your crickets or dusting them? Try feeding her grass hoppers out of your yard, not BIG ones though. If your yard has been present with pesticides refrain from it. Some people feed meal worms, I choose not to. Your choice. Like I said, you need a bigger tank. At least a 20 gallon. It can be screen, glass, or acrylic. It doesn’t matter which just get them a bigger enclosure and more things that they can climb on. Lots of branches! UVA/UVB bulbs are needed. And in my opinion lights are better for heat in basking areas. Due to you having a heat pad on the back of a five gallon tank, it may be too hot in the little tank. Hence why she has her head in the water bowl. Invest in the proper things for the lizards if you want them to live. I would do it ASAP. Your lizard standing up and waving her hands on the glass means she wants out. She isn’t happy man. Make them happy and duplicate their habitat as best as you can in the tank. |
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| 08/22/09 03:55pm |
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Wille View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2061966 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
I have all those ideas in mind, but I didn’t want to invest in anything if I cant save Noodles. I was going to try to find a new home for Jim if Noodles dies. Right now, she is sitting and not doing anything. I am not sure she will have the energy to keep herself from drowning if I put her in the container. Also, I dust my crickets once a week. How much should they be eating?? |
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| 08/22/09 04:00pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061967 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
It may take investing in all those things to save Noodles. You should have gotten all the proper stuff in May. That’s my opinion. If you feel she’ll drown then watch her. At this point, you should be willing to help her. |
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| 08/22/09 04:05pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061967 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 08/22/09 04:06pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2061971 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
Quote: You’re lizard may be compacted. |
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| 08/22/09 04:07pm |
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Wille View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2061969 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
I would have gotten the proper tank, yet all the information I could find at the time did not really reveal that they needed that much space. It was almost impossible to find any information regarding them as pets. All information really pertained to their life in the wild. It was by complete chance that I stumbled upon this site today. I have placed her in a container and filled it with lukewarm water, as per your suggestion. I am keeping watch over her. Thank you for your help. |
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| 08/22/09 04:10pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061974 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
You shouldn’t have needed a website to tell you what size of tank they need Will. When you take a lizard out of the wild, which is the BIGGEST tank of all, and put them in a small tiny 5 gallon tank, of course it’s going to bring them down. It would be like putting you in a prison cell for no reason. Let her run around the house some after the bath. And see if she wakes up a little. This may make her feel ’free’. |
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| 08/22/09 04:23pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061960 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
People should know their stuff on how to care for a reptile before they take them out of the wild. Welcome to RepticZone! |
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| 08/22/09 04:43pm |
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Wille View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2061988 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
Now that we’ve more than established that I’ve pretty much done everything wrong, let’s see what I can fix, and do right! So, if the calcium sand is bad, what do you recommend I use in its place? The corn cobbs would get caught in her throat and the wood chips don’t seem very trustworthy. I have never seen anything else to put reptiles on in any pet store I have been to. Therefore, I am at a bit of a loss, and would more than appreciate a constructive thrust in the right direction. |
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| 08/22/09 06:11pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2062018 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
I use repti bark. I used to cup feed my lizards because I was worried that they would ingest some of the substrate while feasting on the crickets. Well one of my lizards had parasites, in which in turn infested the substrate, the woods, and all the lizards in the tank. So I’ve been treating them for that for over a week. They currently live on paper towels till their treatment is done, but once all the mites are dead and gone I will probably put the repti bark back in; as for it’s been in the freezer for two weeks so the mites should be dead when the time comes. Either the bark or some sort of sand, and I will go back to my normal way of either cup feeding or putting them in a different enclosure for feeding. They didn’t seem to have a problem when I dropped crickets on the repti bark for them, which I rarely did. Some people use peat moss, or whatever it is. Is Noodles acting any better? |
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| 08/22/09 06:29pm |
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Xe_King View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2062020 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 08/23/09 12:31pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Xe_King In reference to Message Id: 2062342 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
That’s just my thoughts though. |
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| 08/23/09 02:11pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2062383 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 08/23/09 03:44pm |
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Gsb92606 View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061960 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
Are your fencies juveniles or adults? If they are juveniles 2 will fit well in a 6-8 gal. But while reading this, i am guessing yours are adults, right? If they are adults the rule is 10 gal. per lizard. |
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| 08/23/09 06:11pm |
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Gsb92606 View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2062383 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 08/23/09 06:48pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Gsb92606 In reference to Message Id: 2062518 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
But in captive a lot of reptile owners are cautious when it comes to compaction. If it wasn’t such an issue then why is it all over the internet? And also why do products state that they are digestible and such, when they really aren’t? Hmmm |
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| 08/23/09 08:12pm |
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_Jd View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2062563 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
Unfortunately, a few of you are on the side of doing whatever it takes to keep these guys as pets, including keeping them in a tiny enclosure and giving them horrible living conditions. This last group are the ones that the responsible pet owners have shock and anger towards because of the mistreatment, even if the mistreatment was a mistake they feel sorry for the mistreated pet and prefer it be saved, so they don’t express the anger very strongly. King... In the wild, as you should know, their numbers are such that the ones that get compacted, can and will die off if they do not push the compaction through. In small cages, their numbers aren’t this accommodating. Most people get upset when a pet or two dies off, and tend to notice when one goes missing or dies in the cage. While few notice or stress out over an animal dying in the wild. Meal Worms are ok to feed them occasionally, but in the wild meal worms don’t hang around in groups of 50 and lizards wouldn’t normally be able to find and consume more than a few a week, so it should not be used as a staple food based on your ’in the wild’ suggestion. Eastern fence lizards most often live atop dirt, trees, leaves, bark, grass, mud, and varying plant-life. Sand is really only in coastal regions, where I see fewer fence lizards. Many lizards do chose or are forced to live on sand in the wild, however, I have never come across ANY fence lizards on those purple calcium sand beaches. Ants are not recommended because they can often bite and sting. Fire ants are deadly to fence lizards, and often kill swifts in about a minute or so of belly stinging. If you are catching ants to feed a lizard, how are you certain of what type of ant you are catching? I personally cannot be sure, because I’m not a biologist, and I avoid ants. Back to the main guy, Will, what does your thermometer and/or hydrometer register the temperature and humidity levels in your cage at? To keep any lizard you need to check off everything on one of the Care Sheets on this site. You need things like a UVB light, I recommend good bark or vermiculite substrate, crickets, 10 gallons of cage space per adult lizard, something to climb on, something to mist a cage with. If you had access to the internet, you had access to a plethora of information of pet care specifically written on and for fence lizards, google search anything to do with "fence lizard care" and you’ll get over 50,000 hits with over 2,000 on this website alone. The reason Jared got mad at you at first was because he knew this, but we can see you didn’t know, and our primary goal is to teach you and not to rebuke you. We want you to save your lizard and be able to know how to save and properly care for your lizard, this is top priority on this thread for all of us... Jared did not want you to get pissed off at him and he did not call you an blistering idiot for not looking here sooner, even though I just did. Just so you know, dusting your crickets with calcium powder happens right before feeding and can be done before every feeding, by dropping the crickets into the same bag of powder before chasing them out of the bag into the cage. They won’t OD on calcium and some believe this decreases the chance of them eating calcium sand substrate, which you shouldn’t be using anyway. You asked how much??... They should be eating at least a few crickets every other day or a cricket or two each day, some prefer to eat up to four and five a day, but they don’t need that much food. You definitely should have gotten all the proper stuff you need to care for lizards when you get a lizard, which would have been in May. Jared is too easy which his ’opinions.’ She won’t drown, but she probably is trying to cool off. Small lizard owners tend to be wary of heating pads or any such things. fence lizards do not have heat sensors on their belly, and can often burn their insides or overheat themselves. If you see them hanging their mouths open at all, this means they are too hot. Calcium sand is in fact indigestible to most fence lizards. I don’t have time to find the links, but I read about an experiment where they put the calcium sand in acid a little stronger, but comparable to most lizards stomach acid and it just sat their for days. They even say on the bag that it "clumps when wet" as if to try and sell it better. What the heck do you think it does in the stomach? If it clumps and becomes hard it would be more difficult for a lizard to pass. Actually, washed and heated play sand is more digestible to most lizards. I’m sure the dyes used to make purple sand and bleach white sand aren’t healthy for the lizard and aren’t naturally found in the wild. I’ve read in a couple forum type places that certain lizards can sense or know that the calcium is in the sand and may eat it voluntarily to make up for a lack of Vitamin D. You guys should all check out Kaplans Substrate info, even though it’s not specifically for Swifts, it’s great information. It doesn’t take much online research to find out Calcium sand is one of the worst pet-store sold substrates around. Sorry your lizard is  Depressed, good luck getting her back to normal. |
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| 08/28/09 02:42pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: _Jd In reference to Message Id: 2064691 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
The fact is, I and other people have had lizards die in captivity due to compaction. |
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| 08/28/09 10:35pm |
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Gsb92606 View Profile |
Message To: _Jd In reference to Message Id: 2064691 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 08/29/09 07:28pm |
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_Jd View Profile |
Message To: Gsb92606 In reference to Message Id: 2065217 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 09/01/09 02:17pm |
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Gsb92606 View Profile |
Message To: _Jd In reference to Message Id: 2066299 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 09/01/09 07:51pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Gsb92606 In reference to Message Id: 2066471 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
I sure wasn’t. I was just expressing my thoughts and or opinions.... |
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| 09/01/09 08:18pm |
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_Jd View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2066480 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
 of hosting anything really comparable to a fight.
Willie, are you still out there? Hope I didn’t scare you off.... How is Noodles doing, and how Old is she anyways???... yes that can be a contributing factor. |
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| 09/01/09 09:52pm |
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Gsb92606 View Profile |
Message To: _Jd In reference to Message Id: 2066508 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 09/01/09 11:00pm |
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Jaaazymine View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061961 Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!
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| 10/02/09 08:19pm |
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Alliebear123 View Profile |
Message To: Wille In reference to Message Id: 2061960
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| 10/02/09 09:51pm |
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Sick Fence Lizard? Please Advise!