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#1745034

Icu844
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Solomon Island Ground skinks

Looking for any husbandry information on Eugongylus albofasciolatus. I understand there was an article in one of the Reptile Magazines. Any help would be appreciated. You can email me at: fruitflies@ bellsouth.net Thanks, JERRY

05/24/08 02:07pm

#1746588

JackAsp
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Message To: Icu844 In reference to Message Id: 1745034

Solomon Island Ground skinks

I haven’t been able to find that article, or ,much else, either, but I’ve got one too. I started her out in a 48X 18X21 jungle terrarium, but she burrowed so much it was impossible to see her enough to know if she was healthy or not. So I tried a tub. It’s 44" X 22" X 6.5", if I remember correctly. I remember that when I did the math it had significantly more floor space than the bigger tank, and she seems very happy with it. I keep almost three inches if slightly moist sphagnum in it, with a few thick branches sunk into it for when she wants something to sink her claws into. Mostly, she slithers around underneath, peeking her head out just above the surface, but she spends a lot more time on the surface in this setup then she did in the tank. The behavior change was instantaneous. it one of those big clear tubs with the twp flaps that clamp at both sides that you can get at Walmart or whatever. I was worried that, while a lower top seemed in order for her, that it would be a bit TOO low, but it didn’t really cost anything so I gave it a try and it turned out she loves it. She’s over 16 inches long, but her legs are so tiny that even when she’s sitting on one of the "logs" that stick up over substrate deep enough for her to burrow around completely under she can still hold her head up high like a little monitor without it touching the top, so the dimensions seem to be absolutely perfect.

I use strip lights for UVB (I went crazy with a soldering iron and planer on the plastic lid) and when room temperatures are cool or fluctuating I use a heat mat under one end too. She seems to like it much cooler then you’d expect a tropical lizard to though. 80 or 81 seems to be about as warm as she can get before she starts hanging out in the water dish a lot. I use a flowerpot drain pan so she has easy water access, but that’s because she doesn’t usually LIKE to climb, not that they physically can’t. She has no trouble running up my arm, for example, but when I had a taller setup with branches and tall rocks she just wanted to stay buried. During the winter she’ll sometimes use the end with the heat pad, but even then she’s usually in the cool end. Right now I still have lighting over both halves of the tub, but I’ll probably go down to just one two-foot fixture with double strips once summer kicks in, because in a low tub with any kind of lighting whatsoever over it overheating seems to be more of a concern then underheating.

She was raised on canned cat food for two years, but hopefully I got her before there was any organ damage or serious carcinogen buildup. I worried that she might be hard to switch over to live food, but she had no problem whatsoever with it. She’ll eat crickets, but I personally find them to be more annoying than they’re worth. I stick to things that I can keep in a food dish. Discoid roaches would probably be the perfect size, but I raise the craniifer/fusca hybrids, so I usually feed her multiple nymphs. She can eat an adult, but it’s a little on the big side since I feed her every day and I don’t want her getting overweight. Sometimes just to add excitement I’ll give her one, though, especially if it’s freshly shed. I also give her trout worms (aka red wigglers), nightcrawlers cut into two or three pieces (she’s had some trouble with swallowing whole nightcrawlers the wrong way and having to re-swallow them a million times as they kept crawling back up; that’s GOT to be stressful, so I cut them), and freshly shed superworms. Once in a blue moon she’ll eat silkworms or small hornworms, but they aren’t exactly favorites. She almost never touches fruit, but the roaches eat so much of it that if there’s really anything in fruit that she needs I guess she’s covered anyway. I’ve tried, just for the hell of it, a few preserved foods such as remoistened freeze-dried tubifex cubes (she won’t touch them), canned grasshoppers (she actually likes them), and canned snails (she liked them for a while, but quickly lost interest.)

For treats, she’ll eat cooked fish, hard-boiled egg, and sometimes if you catch them in a social mood where they’re willing to hang out on your shoulder, they’ll ( or at least mine will) get curious about what you’e drinking and lick surprising amounts of fluid off of your fingers. Use common sense there. I’ve never given mine anything stronger than caffeine-free green tea. Vegetable juice is probably the best choice. Those moods come and go, by the way; don’t push it. Minerva seems very willing to just flick her tongue at me while getting petted as long as I don’t try to take her out, but yesterday was the first time in forever that I actually had her out on me for a while. For the most part, she seemed fine with it, but she did get nervous for a few seconds when I was walking around too quickly. when they’re nervous they’ll squeak at you. She was calm by the time I put her back in her tub, but she still buried herself pretty much right away, albeit at least not in a big frightened rush, just in more of a "Okay, I’ve had enough human contact for now" kind of way.

Let’s see.. what else..?

There is no time of day that she isn’t sometimes active, but the only time that I’ll consistently see her if I’m up and around is right after sunrise. I think she catnaps a lot.

I give calcium supplements with D3 once a week.

She sheds her skin in much heavier layers than I’d expect a lizard that size to, and sometimes when the eyelids are coming loose she doesn’t even want to open her eyes unless necessary, although she’ll she’ll still feel around and sniff out the food dish. The first couple of times it happened I was worried that there was some kind of health issue, but it’s nothing that sixty seconds with a Q-tip and a little bit of warm water can’t fix. I think it’s just her fluffing up the substrate too much, so it isn’t tight or abrasive enough to do what it "needs to" when she sheds.

That’s about all I’ve got. It’s a good thing she responds so well to such basic care, because the amount of information I’ve been able to find on them is absolutely dismal.

Only other thing I can think of is that she actually seems to like having her cage moved around periodically. As long as they’re in a nice low tub they feel hidden enough that they seem to like spying on people, and having a new angle to look at things from seems to liven them up for a few months. Then, 3-6 months later, sometimes she’ll start just hanging out in her favorite hiding area and only coming out to eat or sometimes soak, so I’ll move the tub someplace else and suddenly she’ll start acting interested in everything again. I don’t know if that’s typical of the species or if that’s just her, but Mini’s the only Eugongylus I actually know. They seem pretty easy, bu they sure as hell haven’t caught on yet. Supposedly she’s captive-bred, but the guy I got her from did not actually know who’d produced her. I’ve had her just under a year and I’m still just watching her and figuring out what works.

05/26/08 01:18am

#1746661

JackAsp
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Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 1746588

Solomon Island Ground skinks

05/26/08 03:56am

#1748637

Luvlizards
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Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 1746661

Solomon Island Ground skinks

This was really interesting to read . . . thanks for the observations!

05/27/08 09:42pm

#1748915

Icu844
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Message To: Luvlizards In reference to Message Id: 1748637

Solomon Island Ground skinks

Just one more question. Would you know if these are live bearers or egg layers and what the gestation period may be. Thanks for the informative information. JERRY

05/28/08 06:59am

#1749226

JackAsp
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Message To: Icu844 In reference to Message Id: 1748915

Solomon Island Ground skinks

According to "Reptiles of the Solomon Islands" by Michael McCoy, the species is oviporous, laying up to five eggs. I don’t know if that’s the record or just the upper end of average, though. Nor does it give any information about gestation. Nor how many times a year they lay or what triggers breeding.
Small clutch size would explain why they’ve been so slow to catch on, though.

05/28/08 03:35pm