Another tank goes up

I've spent the day today putting another tank together and so far it's looks really nice, I didn't take photos for a construction journal on this one but the usual methods were applied... the only big real differences are that I used polystyrene to construct the landscape and used some peat plates that I had floating about:

In other ruraljungle news it looks like the female chameleons have been bickering as now they all have nipped tails, it wont affect them in anyway but it looks nasty until the dead flesh drops off. We should be having another female delivered tomorrow who apparently is the female who was paired with Pharaoh before we adopted him. Because of the bickering/nipping she will probably live on her own.... excited!!!!.
Pippin our poor little male chinchilla that got beaten senseless by his father has made a full recovery and we are currently waiting for his hair to grow back nice and new again.
In more frog related news we can now confirm that the possible male Leucomelas that came back from Hamm to be with us has started calling and we have what now looks to be two huge plump females chasing him about.

Lastly a very nice lady called Anne dropped over to adopt our long term care Axolotl and after collecting it asked if she could bring her grand kids over for a bit of show and tell. Well the kids loved it and even sent us thank you cards!!. The card on the left shows a great picture of our Boa constrictor Titch and the card on the right shows a picture of the three female chameleons eating flies. So I would like to say thank you to Robert and Callum for their brilliant cards

They've started!!!!!

Ok so its not the greatest feeling in the world when you open up a coconut hut in one of your frog tanks and discover a duff batch of eggs. But it is a pretty good feeling nonetheless. Last night when I got home Chris came over and asked me how often I checked for eggs in the frog tanks, so I thought 'hey lets have a look now'... as it turns out I found this under the first coco hut I lifted:

Now these were under a hut in the new cobalt viv and even though they are duff I'm still thrilled that they have started laying already. These were probably carried back from Hamm and she got rid of them early, I have not heard the male call yet, but they have a call that kind of sounds like a mobile phone vibrating on a coffee table, its barely audible sometimes. Fingers crossed they get it right soon and I can be looking forward to some tadpoles.

Starting a new tank and another experiment

I got started on a thumbnail tank yesterday. I really like the idea of having thumbnails again and seeing as how I had a spare 12x12x18 Exo Terra tank knocking about I thought I'd clean it down re-seal it and get started. Here it with the false bottom fitted, the false bottom consisting of four 2 inch diameter legs supporting an egg crate base:

 and I've also cut and fit the membrane I use to keep soil up and water down:

Now on to the experimental bit, in the past I have toyed with various fake rock effect and other fake backgrounds including expanding foam and polystyrene carving. I have however never had a go at making fake rocks. The rocks pictured are carved from polystyrene and so far coated with a concrete mix. When this has dried I will paint it and then seal it using an epoxy resin. Hopefully I will be able to achieve a realistic looking rock that weighs half as much, if not less, than the real thing. This is the first time I have tried this method and am hoping to get a nice result.

I have started gathering a few small plants to go into the new tank and hopefully will have plenty of cuttings available from my other more established tanks.

Chris's cobalts

Here's a quick snap of the cobalt's out and about this morning. They are settling down and starting to explore their tank.

As said before these frogs are part of a new venture with my friend Chris Johnson over at www.chrisjohnsonreptiles.co.uk he was kind enough to pass these into my care for him and I'm enjoying every minute by just standing in front of the tank watching them 'do nothing'. There is already a bit of back stroking going on and they never leave each others side so hopefully we'll have some breeding going on very soon.

New Frogs!!!

At last my friend Chris has returned from Hamm with a bounty!!!, I am now the happy owner of a male Leucomelas and a male blue and black Auratus ( thank god, thought I would never see them), And as part of a new venture with Chris I have taken into my care two of the largest Dendrobates tinctorius 'Cobalt" you have ever seen. These are a wild caught unrelated male/female pair and quite frankly absolutely stunning. They are not the kind of thing I could ever have thought I would one day be looking after but by golly they are smashing!. I will get pictures once every one has settled in and hopefully the calling will start soon.

We can rebuild you... bigger, stronger, ummm .. plasticier

I'm building a new vivarium to house all three of the female Yemen chameleons that I acquired this year through various outlets hoping to bring them up to a breeding standard. For this and for the first time ever I'm trying out polycarbonate twinwall as a building material. This is the stuff the make housing market billboards and roof green houses with. It should be very strong yet very light, be able to stand up to the test of time, be water proof and very insulating. I'm hoping it provides the girls with a nice big forever home.

So it starts with a few sheets of polycarb bought at the local diy centre

Once cut to size I laid the sheets out just to make sure I had cut everything I needed (the jigsaw I used is really noisy so wanted to get that out of the way first).

After the first few panels are stuck together it was left to cure for 24 hours and held together with lots of very technical masking tape.

Note the back panel was made up of two linked panels:

A front strut was added anf the runner for the door was fixed in place:

Then the top supports were stuck and again the whole thing was left to cure for 24 hours:

 Next the mesh is glued in for the roof:

All held in place with some amazingly helpful groceries:

 The doors were added and have ventilation holes drilled along the bottom:

unfortunately I lost some of the making of photos but after much guess work and lots of .... "How are we gonna do this?" we got it finished and in place:

And here it is in pace next to the males tank for size comparison. Its one meter long by 2 feet deep by 3 feet tall and weighs about 10kg in total. Its lit with a mega ray 160watt UVB bulb and two daylight tubes that run front and back, Its got drainage and can be misted along with the other tank on this racking.

All three of our girls have moved in and are settling into their new home nicely.

Been a few days.....

I know it's been a couple of days since the last post but it's been a productive few days. The big tank has started to show good signs of growth already, some of the climbing plants have started putting out new shoots already and some of the moss already present has perked up. The springtails that were added are also starting to colonise the whole tank and hopefully by the time frogs go in there they will be in abundance. In chameleon related news it looks like the larger girl is not ready to lay as yesterday she was displaying a lot of blue coloration to pharaoh so he may still need time to figure it all out.
We did have a bit of a disaster as well.... Pippin our gorgeous little chinchilla, the sole survivor of our very first litter here at the rural jungle was savaged by his father when he broke through the cage separation. The poor little guy is ok but needed a staple to his head and will need painkillers for a couple more days. It doesnt seem to have affected his personality any as Kelly was back stroking his chin and tummy in no time. That coupled with a leaky ceiling all made up for a rather eventful few days around here.... Never a dull moment.