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My Ctenosaurs

S

stolenheron

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I've been catching Ctenosaura similis in the wild (florida) for several years now and have been raising a wild caught female for 2 years as a pet. (I have been catching them live, not killing them).

I have developed a huge interested in the genus and am in love with their personalities, intelligence, and uniqueness. My adult female is now very tame and is a fantastic educational tool for the talks I give for kids k-12 and also at a collegiate level from time to time.

I have A LOT of experience with C. similis behavior.

Currently have 3 ctenosaurs: 2 similis and 1 quinquecarinata.

Boca, roughly 2 year old female (been in my possession since mid october of 2009 when i caught her as a hatchling).
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the day I caught her.
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currently (well 2 months ago).

my juvenile, pistol, (most likely male):
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colors are no longer gray, mostly brown/orange/yellow like the female
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caught mid may of '11

my Q, named ozzy, (most likely male, judging by the femoral pores, but debatable due to the coloration)
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found this guy on craigslist for $30, the owner got it at petco and ended up becoming afraid of the little guy because he was skiddish and she handled it with gloves because she thought the tail was dangerous haha



all eating crickets of various sizes, the Q also eats mealworms. fruits and veggies are plentiful. hibiscus when they are available. plenty of wild caught insects (a lot of people shy away from this in the pet trade, but these are wild caught individuals and i've had much better success with health/coloration/behavior when being fed wild insects as a supplement...consequently they are dewormed regularly just in case). Each are house separately, when the C. similis are the same size I will slowly introduce them and maybe get some eggs from the female.
 
I love the first pic. Did you really expect her to clean her plate? They are beautiful by the way, and I like them too. We just don't see many of those up here in WI.
 
absolute disaster today.

the smallest c. similis (the juvenile male) ripped a hole in his reptarium while inside my screened in patio (with plants, pool, pavillion, etc, basically its huge). I cannot find the guy anywhere, there is one area (a bend in the aluminum frame of the screen enclosure) where he could escape to the outside world and I'm pretty sure he found it.

I am upset to not only have a pet escape, but even more distraught to know that there is a little invasive lizard running around loose now. I saw a hawk up in a tree, grab something and fly off earlier. As crappy as it sounds to say about a pet, I hope the hawk got him before he did any damage to native species :(. maybe I will be lucky enough to find him (after all, I did catch him in the wild 3 months ago), but I am doubtful he will be found.


on a GREAT NOTE: the large C. similis (the female) ate two hoppers today with quite a bit of gusto.
 
That sucks that you had a escapee. Been there, done that.

If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't worry too terribly about him being invasive. Like you said yourself, that species is already fairly established in Florida, so the damage has been done, in a sense. While of course, I'm not condoning the intentional release of non-natives, in your case, it WAS an accident, and IMHO, its not worth losing too much sleep over.

ON the brighter side, I am always encourage to hear of hobbyists taking an interest in species that are not so mainstream (i.e. green iguanas or bearded dragons, etc). My underyling concern is that a lot of these more over-looked species will gradually not get any attention and at some point, years from now, someone is going to look around and want say, a spiny-tailed iguana and they're not going to be available because no one breeds them in captivity and the govt finally outlawed any import/export of them in some capacity.
 
GOT HIM! I was feeding my adult ctenosaur about 50 crickets, i dumped some xtras on the bricks for the anoles on my patio. I walk away, 10 minutes later i return to see that little bas***d is eating them in the middle of the patio. I chased him down and got him! I'm very happy, 1 i got my pet back 2 there isnt a little demon lizard terrorizing the neighborhood.

no, the species is only established on 2 islands on the west coast. a mainland population would be terrible


Ctenosaura similis is such a mistunderstood species. Their natural diet, their "untamable" attitude, etc etc is SO misconstrued.
 
field collected 9 live specimens today with a licensed trapper from the state.
keeping 1 adult male. he is absolutely vicious, nearly bit my finger off, but I am gonna need him for research in the future.

here he is and the hatchlings we collected.

in the sunlight he is baby blue/gray and orange/yellow
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male top, female bottom.

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and the cute ones.
 
just built this enclosure this weekend
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split 50/50, left side for my tamed subadult/adult female, right side for my juvenile (still pissy) male.

I have since added two buld fixtures below each of the shelves in the enclosure to provide light for the bottom half of the cage. I need to swap to some daylight bulbs rather than house bulbs, but other than that it is basically done.
 
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Had a near disaster yesterday. was feeding the iguanas, moved the C. quinquecarinata to a different cage. 20 minutes later I come back to blood all over the back drop/sticks and a prolapse. I immediately made a call to my lizard vet, placed him in a sugar-water bath to soak. for a lizard with a 3" snout to vent length, surgery is just to risky. all I could do is hope and pray that soaking would work. he hopped out of the bowl on his own in the bathtub. I had my friends come by and check on him while I was out of the house, his condition didn't change. 8 hours later, I come home to check on him, expecting the little guy to have bled out....he was running around the bathtub with no issues, the prolapse had retracted and he was back to normal.

I am pretty sure the prolapse was foriegn object caused (he took a mouthful of cocofiber last week, while eating mealworms that fell out of the bowl).

I also picked up a Rhinoceros iguana yesterday!
 
I realize I post more in my own thread than anyone else BUT.... this is my Ctenosaura diary i guess haha.

Today = deworming day at the vet. all 3 of my ctenosaurs and my 1 rhino ig are going in today.

YESTERDAY: my female similis decided to jump off of the 2nd story balcony and land in the grass. luckily she was so fat that she basically bounced and just walk around eating weeds until I could rush out of the building and outside.

the C. quin. seems to be doing just fine since the prolapse.


I am worried about 2 things. Is my juvenile similis a male and what sex is the C. q.

I caught the similis tihnking/hoping for a male so I can have a pair in a few years. I do not have a care whether my C. q is a male or a female I just want to know the sex.
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my c. q.'s femoral pores.... they look to be male BUT the lizard's overall length is about 7 inches and it is barely growing which makes me think it is a female (color is also brown)

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my juvi similis' pores. this was take a few months and a few inches shorter ago. i'm praying it is a male :/ but I wont know for a while and I'm too afraid to have someone experienced try and probe it
 
UPDATE:
-C. similis female is doing perfect
-C. quinquecarinata is just fine, no more prolapse issues.
-HOWEVER, just as my juvenile C. similis (male?)'s forearm injury healed, he jumped out of his cage when I was cleaning and he hurt his hind leg upon landing. He is going on lockdown again and will be getting an appropriate dose of metacam.

he doesnt have MBD, he has full UVB/A spectrum, a balanced diet, and calcium powdered crickets. This guy is just unlucky :(
 
My C. similis female finally reached sexually maturity to my surprise.

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she stopped eating, and began to act odd. sure enough she laid over 20 infertile eggs. she is all skin and bones now, but it getting her appetite for greens and fruits back. However, she has not begun eating farm raised crickets again and will only take wild caught insects like large mantises and grasshoppers.

No more juvenile male c. similis and no more c. quinquecarinata.

I caught another young juvenile last week and hope to raise him or her up to adult hood.



IF ANYONE HAS AN ADULT OR SUBADULT MALE C. SIMILIS FOR SALE PLEASE PM ME!
 
What area of Florida are you catching them. I know there are a lot of wild green iguanas and veiled chameleons, but didn't know these guys have a wild population. Interesting!
 
AmberNichole said:
What area of Florida are you catching them. I know there are a lot of wild green iguanas and veiled chameleons, but didn't know these guys have a wild population. Interesting!
Click to expand...

PM me.

not very many veiled left in the population I knew of since they just cleared the land for a building.
 
i love reading all your post not very many people take to c.similis like you have i have 2 pairs just because i love the little crazy fast guys.
 
I just got 2 more in today. They were actually babies that I field collected about 5 months ago that I had given to a friend. They both look to be female which is a shame. I need an adult male, quite badly.

If anyone is willing to trade a group of 2 subadult females and 1 unknown baby for a male adult. just lemme know
 
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