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Five-lined skink..need help!!

L

loye

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So, I was out at college the other day and ended up coming home with a lizard. I had no idea what it was until I came home and got online to look it up. Found out it was a five lined skink. Well, I have absolutly NO skink experience. I have leopard geckos, and Veileds, and snakes...now I have this little guy! I put it in a 10g tank and tried to make it as much like a natural habitat as i could. I have a substrate that is like a mix of dirt, leave like stuff etc. Its called Reptile litter and it says its perfect for forest animals and burrowing animals. Since I read they burrow, thought this would work. I also put in some plants and logs and got a light for it.

Is there anything else I should be doing? I think its still a baby as its only about an inch or two long and still has a bright blue tail...i was told this goes away with age. ANY info would help! I wanna make sure i care for it right. Thanks!
 
Where did you get it? If it was wild caught or native to your area you sould just let it go. It will lose the blue color with age. If you are going to keep it find some caresheets. If there aren't any about five lined skinks, keep it like other skinks like a fire skink or something.
I hope that helped!
 
I'm not familiar with lizard litter, but I have a western skink which is quite similar and I keep it on repti-bark. Your set-up sounds pretty good.

You want to make sure you have a good UV flourescent light and lots of cover so that it will feel secure enough to venture out while the light is on (I've read some posts involving Eumeces species that sounded like they were suffering from metabolic bone disease: "what's wrong with my skink?"; the skinks in all these cases were either not being supplemented or had no access to UV or both).

You also want to make sure you gut load and dust its feeders with a high quality calcium and vitamin supplement (this shouldn't be a problem since you probably already have this stuff for your other lizards ;) ). It's also a good idea to have a moist area that the lizard can retreat to to prevent shedding problems. A flat piece of bark etc. that you mist under regularly would work great. You should also provide a shallow water dish, but mist at least once daily in case it doesn't recognize the dish as a water source.

Hope this helps,
Alice
 
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