Hatchlings feeding behavior

I have a question about Hatchlings feeding behavior. My hatchlings are an arboreal species and as such they hang out far above the bottom of their cage. Whereas the feeder insects that I introduce (mainly very small crickets at this stage) immediately head for the floor! How does one get the two together?

I have been advised to place some food that crickets like up into the arboreal area where the babies are, but thus far I have not found any food that so attracts the crickets.

Surely someone has long ago figured out this problem and has a solution?

Thanks, G

it would help tremendously to know some more details like what kind of hatchlings and how old are they .in general, hatchlings need a high concentration of feeders, which is very difficult to maintain in a large cage, that is one of the main reasons to keep hatchling cage size small (i raised 14 jacksons in a 10g aquairium for the first two months and locating food was still an issue for them) . the problem is as feeeders they have yet to develop full hunting and tounge skills ,and it takes them a while to understand that they can get to that bug on the next leaf over (or the floor) by walking over to it , so for many hatchlings you cant count on them finding food (even if there is plenty available ) you have to set things up in such a way that the food comes to them, with cricks this can be hard to do , but you could try thread tying some flukers oc up in the plants where the hatchlings hang out, and using plenty of bamboo skewers so they can get from the floor up into the bushes but it only draws a limited #of crickets . this is one reason that hydei ffs make better first time feeders, enough hydei in a small cage and they will eventually make it to all parts of the cage, one way of slow release so that you dont just expend all of your ffs at once is to place a heavily producing culture right in the cage (you can even sparingly dust the existing flies in the culture right in there own culture container) what i like to do is put about a 1/4-3/8" hole in the lid of the culture and put a bamboo skewer in the hole (pointed end down) fasten the culture in the cage near the part of the cage the hatchlings like to hang out the most , the ffs will walk up the skewer a few at a time were they can easily be seen and eventually spread all over the cage . when enough flies have been released you can simply pull the skewer and put some blue tape over the hole, when you want to release more flies, just pull the tape and put the skewer back in. one final note on hatchlings, most hatchlings can survive only a few days without food intake,so whatever feeder or system you are going to use , i would strongly recomend getting your cage and feeder system up and dialed in as soon as possible

Hi there J. Walker! and thanks for your really nice reply.
1) My hatchlings are the species Anolis coelestinus (Hispaniola). I gave up trying to find anoliphiles to help me out and decided my problem was not limited to anoles; others keeping chameleons and geckoes would have the same problem. So hope I have not transgressed any borders here

I currently have four baby coelestinus anoles. I discovered the 1st baby on 8-07-09, but I believe he was at least a few days old by then. At that time his mother (now deceased) was in a 29 gallon aquarium and had been since I got her back in May. I discovered the 2nd baby on 8-23-09 as I was taking apart the 29 gallon preparatory to re-planting it. This 2nd baby was very skinny at this point and could have been in the vivarium for longer than the first one judging by the difference in their weights when discovered.
(Keep in mind that this 29 gallon vivarium was heavily planted with plants in soil, hence the difficulty in seeing juveniles).

At the same time that I discovered baby #2 I also found an unhatched egg. I took it out of the dismantled aquarium and put it in a make-shift incubator, not really believing I could bring it to hatch but had nothing to lose. On September 3rd I checked my incubator and was astonished to find a baby anole! So I know for sure how old my 3rd baby is. This baby was also unique in that it had a very bright green color whereas his siblings were both a grayish-green. At this point I was running out of separate glass containers to put all these babies in! Some of my anole gurus told me to keep very young anoles separate from each other, and some said the opposite.

Meanwhile, on September 9th my adult female coelestinus escaped from her vivarium and in the process of trying to re-capture her, she fell awkwardly and hit the edge of a plastic recycling box. This broke her lower back where it connects to the sacral area, and she was paralyzed in her hindlegs as a result. So I had to put her down. She had been not only a prolific mother but was a breeze to feed, readily taking dubia roaches from a feeding bowl daily.

On September 24th I discovered the fourth baby - again completely by accident. It was down on the concrete below an Exo-Terra which I had been working on and which had as a result been open. This Exo-Terra had held the female for just a few days but obviously she took advantage of it! How long it was in there I don't know. But the hatchling was in good shape.

I noted with much interest your statement that you raised 14 Jacksons in a 10 gallon!

Well with four baby anoles, it was obvious that I needed more space so I purchased a used 10 gallon glass aquarium. Since discovering it, I had had my first anole baby in a Finnex 4 gallon glass aquarium. Then I put the 2nd and 3rd babies in this newly acquired 10 gallon. With the fourth I decided to move the oldest baby into the 10 gallon with the 2nd and 3rd babies, and put the newest and youngest (#4) in the 4 gallon.

It was at this point that things began to seem to go wrong. The oldest baby, #1, moped in the 10 gallon and hid most of the time, something he never did in his original 4 gallon tank. So he was no longer eating. Meanwhile the 2nd baby, which had initially been very emaciated, was still so. Whereas the 3rd baby, the bright green one, was the extrovert of the bunch!

Putting my biggest and oldest anole into the tank with younger ones presented feeding problems in that he had already graduated to small crickets from the flightless fruit flies I used to feed him and the other newborns. But with the floor of the 10 gallon tank much farther down than the floor was in his 4 gallon tank, I believed that he was not descending to where the crickets were, and they stayed definitely on the floor not on the branches. The others didn't seem to be interested in the crickets either. I did keep a supply of fruit flies in there for the young ones, but this left me with my oldest and dearest baby moping around and not eating.

So I re-arranged the setups. I moved baby #3 into the 4 gallon with baby #4 and left my oldest and baby #2 in the 10 gallon. When I did this I took the opportunity to "re-landscape" the 10 gallon, making it simpler and easier for me to see what was going on and hopefully easier for the babies to see the floor. I also tried to setup a cooler zone and a warm one. All this change upset everyone and they all went brown on me for a while! N.B. The plants in these two small vivaria are not planted; the plants are still in pots and the substrate is rounded, natural, large grain sand. There are perches as well of wooden branches.

I believe you are the first herpetoculturist to point out that new-born lizards do not know how to hunt! This makes abundant sense. I have only very rarely seen my babies attack and eat food, but they are beginning to do so here and there. For the most part they do stay in one place and wait for the food to come to them. This is why I have the problem; crickets and flies mostly on bottom of tank; anoles above in the branches and plants.

There is one phrase you used that I do not understand: but you could try thread tying some flukers oc up in the plants where the hatchlings hang out. What are flukers oc? If they are crickets, then I am sorry but I have not the ability to tie anything around small crickets!! I try to avoid even picking them up as when I do I crush them and kill them. So I just transfer the crickets by picking up the old egg carton pieces they are on and knock the crickets off into my apparatus that contains the dusting powder in the base below the grill.

I have always used Repti-Cal at every feeding, coating the fruit flies and crickets (which does slow both down).

So, J.W., they must be eating some, because otherwise some would be dead from starvation by now. I was just hoping there was some way to help them figure out how to get food. I have seen appropriate sized pinhead crickets literally walk by one of my babies, without being eaten or even much noticed! That is pretty aggravating.

Gasteriaphile

Originally Posted by j walker

it would help tremendously to know some more details like what kind of hatchlings and how old are they .in general, hatchlings need a high concentration of feeders, which is very difficult to maintain in a large cage, that is one of the main reasons to keep hatchling cage size small (i raised 14 jacksons in a 10g aquairium for the first two months and locating food was still an issue for them) . the problem is as feeeders they have yet to develop full hunting and tounge skills ,and it takes them a while to understand that they can get to that bug on the next leaf over (or the floor) by walking over to it , so for many hatchlings you cant count on them finding food (even if there is plenty available ) you have to set things up in such a way that the food comes to them, with cricks this can be hard to do , but you could try thread tying some flukers oc up in the plants where the hatchlings hang out, and using plenty of bamboo skewers so they can get from the floor up into the bushes but it only draws a limited #of crickets . this is one reason that hydei ffs make better first time feeders, enough hydei in a small cage and they will eventually make it to all parts of the cage, one way of slow release so that you dont just expend all of your ffs at once is to place a heavily producing culture right in the cage (you can even sparingly dust the existing flies in the culture right in there own culture container) what i like to do is put about a 1/4-3/8" hole in the lid of the culture and put a bamboo skewer in the hole (pointed end down) fasten the culture in the cage near the part of the cage the hatchlings like to hang out the most , the ffs will walk up the skewer a few at a time were they can easily be seen and eventually spread all over the cage . when enough flies have been released you can simply pull the skewer and put some blue tape over the hole, when you want to release more flies, just pull the tape and put the skewer back in. one final note on hatchlings, most hatchlings can survive only a few days without food intake,so whatever feeder or system you are going to use , i would strongly recomend getting your cage and feeder system up and dialed in as soon as possible

anoles are even smaller than jacksons and the 10 g was almost too large to start, so it must have been massive to baby anoles, also cage setup has a lot to do with things, for instance i had a white terry cloth cage liner, 2 small potted plants ,(trimmed so babys couldnt get out) lots of bamboo skewers (pointed ends down) going from the corners of the tank up to the corners of the plant potsso both bugs and lizards have lots of access between floor and top of cage. also on the floor between the 2 plants, i setup a mass of climbing branches situated over either a small feeding cup or a couple of flukers oc (flukers orange cubes are a soft, cubed, nutritional and hydration supplement for crickets and similar feeders,a gutload of sorts, ffs love them) also you can put a single oc in your feeding cup to keep pinheads or other feeders hydrated, you can string a thread through one and ty it up high, like just below your basking branches

sorry hit post before i was finished , so anyway. ive seen hungry neonates stare at a bug 4" away for an hr , not realizing it could just walk over to it. its sort of like fishing, there might have to be dozens or more just so presentations before one finally triggers it to strike, but its not just an issue of animal and cages size , cage design has a big influence. i dont know about anoles ,but baby jacksons will ignore food if they are stressed or panicked over other issues (like the glass panic syndrome),so creating a complex enviroment with lots of avantages hunting positions and lots of features to attract feeders to desired areas, you can also wipe the upper inside perimeter with olive oil to keep 95% of the wingless ffs in the tank. just an opinion, but i would either switch to calci-sand or cover your substrate

but its not just an issue of animal and cages size , cage design has a big influence. i dont know about anoles ,but baby jacksons will ignore food if they are stressed or panicked over other issues (like the glass panic syndrome),so creating a complex enviroment with lots of avantages hunting positions and lots of features to attract feeders

Can you "expand" on the glass panic syndrome? that sounds interesting and may be another thing I've been dealing with, but since i have never heard that phrase I don't know.

I have much to learn about raising very young juveniles; fortunately I found some folks like you willing to take the time to share your experience with me. Know that it is greatly appreciated!!!

in general aquariums are frowned upon by many us keepers , there are several special issues when keeping reps especially chams in glass, (although the europeans have done a much better job of it then americans) one of the most difficult problems with keeping many chams and some other reps in glass is their failure to recognize it as a physical barrier, they cant comprehend the concept of an invisible barrier. they cant see it, so, it must not be there. chams are panicers, and when faced with a situation they dont understand they tend to stress at least, and in some cases outright panic. many chams will paw at a glass barrier for a long time, maybe even hrs in some cases, not understanding that they cant get through it, often so consumed in their anxiety, that they dont even notice or care about a branch that may be only a couple of inches away. they would prefer to walk on branches, and will usualy get sidetracked if there is a branch within grasping distance, so the problem can sometimes be settled by better planting, but in the case of a glass cage they can readily see out and it is unrecognizable that there is a barrier there, and they dont want to walk back to where they just came from, they want to walk to were they can see, which is where the branches dont go (out of the cage to the other side of the room), so they just paw, get nervous cause their not getting anywhere, paw some more, get even more nervous. sometimes you can just point them in a different direction, sometimes they will go right back to pawing. it can cause nose or paw rub , sometimes it can even lead to sores, and its always a source of stress which is especially harmfull in chams ,hope that explains it better

Hi John, over on the "west side" of our deal old state.
OK I see what you mean. I had this happen to my anoles. An adult female was perfectly content for a long time until I put her into a different lighting and same aquarium. Also have had juvenile launch itself into the air...er glass. Surprise!
I have decided that as much as I had planned on "naturalistic", which meant no backgrounds, etc., and how much I liked the idea of the plants themselves being the background, it just doesn't work with "dumb animals". (No offense but reptiles are not the brightest things when it comes to man-made environments).
So I have begun to try out different backgrounds. Even something as simple as paper calms my anoles down. It also tends to reduce the reflective nature of my aquarium's sides, which, with the kind of lights I use, really makes a mirror. I have had male anoles displaying to...well, themselves.
I am learning.
Breck in Spokane

actually, the onice rests on us as keepers . it is not up to the reptiles to figure out what we have (so poorly) designed for them, but rather it is up to us, to design something they dont have to figure out , sure in human terms they are stupid, but in reptile terms, it is we as keepers who lack the perfect knowledge.

Originally Posted by j walker

actually, the onice rests on us as keepers . it is not up to the reptiles to figure out what we have (so poorly) designed for them, but rather it is up to us, to design something they dont have to figure out , sure in human terms they are stupid, but in reptile terms, it is we as keepers who lack the perfect knowledge.

John, I couldn't agree with you more. It is definitely up to us and in my case, I failed miserably for a long time. I am happy to say, however, that as of yesterday, I feel that I have definitely turned a corner. All four of my babies are now well-fed, crickets are disappearing, and because I have figured out that they do not like as much light as I was using, they are more active and hiding less. (They were actually "hiding" from the light). These are Anolis coelestinus from the southern part of the Greater Antillean island of Hispaniola. There they inhabit a mesic forest which is described by Schwartz and Henderson (q.v.) as "cool". Did I "process" that info? No! Duh!!