Re: Response to Wai's post about acclimating....

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Posted by WailuiHerp on February 11, 2003 at 13:52:10:

In Reply to: Response to Wai's post about acclimating.... posted by Terry Cox on February 06, 2003 at 17:37:00:

Terry,

Thanks for sharing the cute Panda painting with us.

I do agree with you that the moellendorffi and many other Asian species are normally active early in the morning. When I first visited Guangxi, China my friend and I spent a lot of time in those caves searching for two new species of geckos, the Goniurosaurus araneus and Goniurosaurus luii. I found those caves to be very humid and hot in the early summer. We could remain for only a short period of time in those caves.

The weather in San Francisco is pretty cool, so I have to heat my animal room all year round. The moellendorffi is kept in the same room as the taeniura, I set the temperature around 80-85F for most of the time. Because I don�t have a cooling system in my house, it frequently gets as high as 90F in the summer afternoons, but this doesn�t seem to stress them out. The humidity here is about the same as Michigan. I have to raise the humidity by the humidifier in the spring and summer times.

I found some information about the habitat from my Chinese herpetological research. It mentions that moellendorffi are found in ranges of elevation between 50-300 meters. So except if we know where our animal came from, we will never know if we have created the right climate for them. My conclusion is once they have settled down they are quite tolerable animals. I think the temperature you are keeping them in 75-82F is reasonable, but I don�t believe the low humidity is favorable for them.

Just like the mandarina, without those people who are not afraid to take care of them, we wouldn�t have that many CB mandarina babies available today. I�m sure one day we will have some captive bred moellendorffi available if we continue to work on this species.

Terry, maybe you should come to China with me sometime, I am sure you will enjoy both the culture and the nature there.

Chinese people say that, � We always found a teacher in a group of three people�. That means we are always finding something to learn from each other. I�ll wish you and I both have good luck in breeding them this year, Please keep me informed if you find anymore information of this mystery species.

Wai

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Re: Response to Wai's post about acclimating.... Terry Cox 02/13/03 (0)