I was lurking around.....

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Mountain and Tree Dragon Forum ]

Posted by cheyanne on April 03, 2003 at 21:59:44:

Playing catch up on the old posts, checking up on you making sure you are playing nice, lol.
I am so sorry Cyndi about the loss of the babies and Bob. I would not blame it on the bed a beast entirely. This stuff is touted as digestable. The added salts from water softening may have played a part more than the substrate itself. Salt dehydrates. Combined with more chiton on the mealworms and possible ingestion of substrate you might have a bad mix. That is just a thought though. Either way I feel your loss. I can remember watching baby after baby die when I first hatched these guys. :(

I also felt the need to comment on a post made in late March where it was said that a certain pet store sells Cb MHDs for $15-30. Keep your guard up. I too have my doubts about the validity of the cb claim on a $15-30 lizard. Pet stores are notorious for selling people exactly what they want to hear. You want to hear that that lizard is CB, ok sure it is and by the way you keep it in a 10 gallon tank with no water and a 50 watt bulb. Did you know that there are arboreal Ball Python babies at PetCo?? Only because they keep them in cages with more height than ground space and the heat source is wayyyy up high. The snakes do what they have to do to get warm. It's not proper by any means though and the babies don't look as nice as they should. Hell, now you could even be fed the ultimate bullsh*t line that will be the cause of multiple stupid anti reptile laws in the future: "You can keep it small by keeping it in a small cage." Insert "hyuk" here. I used to work for a well known pet store chain and let me tell you they don't even breed their own mealworms and how hard is that??! Leopard Geckos breed like gangbusters and they rarely sell for less than $40. Pet stores buy wc dragons for $6-10 each, double the price for the average pet store markup and you get about a $15-25 or so lizard. When I did sell my babies to the pet store I didn't do it for less than $45 each, they jacked the price to $90 and finally had their 30% off sale after they had spent a number of months growing up there. I can't see any breeder pumping out so many of these guys that they would let them go for less than at least $25 to the pet store. These lizards don't breed that reliably. MHDs also don't sell well so very few stores are willing to spend the $25-45 and have to keep an animal forever when they can get them for $6-10 and if they die so be it. Be on guard, always. I can't stress that enough. I thought the store I worked for was pretty cool about honesty until I started working there. Pet stores are slimey.

Sorry to rant and for the gratuitous use of html but I just had to get that out. Do what you will with it.

Other than that everyone here seems to be doing well. I see many names I don't know and see many more posts daily than there used to be. That is good. Maybe when there are more people with knowledge of these dragons there will be less deaths.
Have a good night everyone.
Cheyanne

Follow Ups: