Zebra Finches

Plexiglass makes taking pics of birds MUCH easier. They went in their new cage yesterday and are back to singing and eating today, still startle easily, but that will happen when you have to catch them to move them.

Adults

Whole Flock

Large Finch Flight Cage

So two months ago I bought some zebra finches. While they do go against my standard pet rule, easily handleable, they're cute, and require less attention then some other choices. I bought a pair with the intention of letting them breed at least once so I could have a small group rather than just one pair. I may or may not swap some of the babies with others just so I don't have a group of all related birds. They had four chicks that just left the nest this weekend. I've been planning out their cage a few times and settled for the largest one that can fit in my living room (it actually can't fit out of my living room with out being disassembled...

They've been living in my old cockatiel cage, which I realized in two days was much too small to let them fly as much as they want, a 30" x 18" x 36" dome top... The new cage is 5' long by 30" deep, by 3' tall. This is roughly 4+ times the interior space. The top has plexi doors so I can see the birds without wire in the way which they should learn not to fly into (the adults were from a store that had glass fronted cages, and they seemed to figure it out easily, I'll probably drape something over it for a while to keep it from being an attractive exit), and the bottom wire. The sides and back are solid at the moment, which will supposedly keep them calmer, though they mostly ignore the dogs anyway, and the top is wire for ventilation and so I could add lights or heat lamps in the winter.

Awful cell phone pic of the birds through their thick wired cage.

Growth - Kenyan Sand Boa

Adult Male Normal Sand Boa, approx 16in long, About 5 years old

When I really noticed he was getting bigger, yes he was tiny when I got him.

Back when I first got him (2009), same hand

This is Baby (I was lazy about naming pets for a while.) I remember initially he was a nightmare to feed (had no interest what so ever), but once I got him to eat he quickly endeared himself. He's pretty, very docile, and stays quite small. Except for that need of higher temps (90-95° hot spot) then some other beginner snakes I think he would make a great starter snake. The real bonus is the size though. He's about 5 years old now, and seems to have stopped growing. He lives in a small low exo-terra tank, and he should be able to live in that for the rest of his life (min. another 10 years).

Firebelly Toad Froglet...

A little smaller then a dime, living in a 16oz deli container. It's eating fruit flies at the moment, but since it's so small I have way too many fruit flies.

DIY Vertical Terrarium Conversions

I'm slowly dealing with the annoyances of my pets. I have three not particularly tame (one actually bites, and the other two flee in terror) male crested geckos. They've been in 20 gallon high aquariums with screen lids for a few years. The downsides of this setup are numerous, but the worst is any time I open the cage if startled they rocket to the top and I have to close the lid to keep them in, and wait for them to calm back down before I can do anything. This means I don't feed or clean as often as I should because it's a pain.

A few months ago I thought why not flip the aquariums on their sides and make the top the front. This was partially caused by picking up some Exo-terra terrariums on clearance and loving the front opening aspect, meaning I can leave a heat lamp on the top but still feed or clean. The Kenyan sand boa is so much easier to deal with when I don't have to take off the lamp, pull at the cage locks, then look for the snake. Same with the leopard gecko. So I had the flipping idea and looked around. Plenty of other people had done it, notably dart frog owners and breeders. They'd silicone a small piece of glass to the bottom edge of the new opening, use an aquarium lid hinge to attach it to another piece of glass that acted as a door. the very top would have a custom screen for air exchange. There were even companies that made kits. Kits were about $25 maybe per set of two pieces of glass hinges and a screen. I had to purchase the frame pieces for the screen, and had a glass shop cut the glass (Awesome experience with Ace Glass.) Turns out I had all the other parts. I had some silicone, took apart two aquarium hoods for the hinges, and had just enough screen left to make these small screens.

I used 6 inch tall glass for the bottom and 13 inch for the top, width depends on your specific tank. Of the three tanks I used one was very slightly smaller. I bought unfinished glass (it's cheaper) so did have to sand the edges at home with a sanding sponge. I also bought a glass cutter so might just cut my own glass next time if I can find 1/8" thick, all the local stores sell 3/32" which is just slightly too thin. And at $5.00 or so a piece for the largest pieces I didn't see much point it buying a large piece just to test how bad I am at cutting glass.

Some links I used as inspiration.

• Making PDF Tank vertical tank 3D Background
• 20 gallon vertical conversion live terrarium
• diy 10 gallon vertical vivarium
• 10 gallon vertical dart frog terrarium construction

Note: this conversion only works for animals that do not require UVB, mostly floor or nocturnal dwellers from very heavy rainforests, if your animal requires UVB the top of your cage needs to be mesh to let the light through.

New year, New pets

So to celebrate getting a new full-time job, and having excess Christmas money hanging around I went to a reptile expo. I was also celebrating entering the final weeks of my retail job and having weekends back. I had a few interests, but with this being winter it was slim pickings for captive bred juvie snakes, they're much more common in late spring to mid-summer depending on species. I did pick up the two above Kenyan sand boas, hopefully females, one is a lighter yellow and the other is the traditional pinkish orange. I did have a few chances at adult snakes, but they were all too squirmy for me. I already have a boa and he is the most laid back of the snakes. The ones up for sale were all freaked out and thrashing, and having tried that exactly once I won't buy a very thrashy non juvenile snake. (I bought a sinaloan milk snake who thrashed so badly I thought he would injure himself, and after a few months I rehomed him because I couldn't get him to calm down at all.) Once a few years old a snake should be much more handle able if it's a species known for it. The two I picked were both much calmer, and after having them for a week both have also eaten. I also tried for females because they get bigger then the males, and I already have a male (judging by how he stopped growing at about 15 inches a few years ago). While I have no plans to bred them you never know. The real goal is a little silly. I have three large snakes, they all eat the same food, so the food can be bought in large quantities but eaten fast enough it doesn't get freezer burn. The sand boa eats much smaller food, that tends to get freezer burn since I have to buy it in even larger quantities, and only have one snake that eats it (the frog gets one about once a month, and the bigger snakes sometimes get one, but one snake takes a long time to go through a bag of a hundred fuzzies.) So I either wanted a baby corn who would eat fuzzies at a very good clip for a while, or something else that stayed smaller. The new boas are eating pinks, but will move up to fuzzies eventually, then I'll stop having the freezer burn problem.

I also took a chance on some fire belly toad tadpoles. I had an empty cycled fish tank, so they went in there. As of three weeks in, all but one have disappeared, but the one I have left is huge. Maybe I'll get an adult out of it eventually.

I have plans to rework the reptile room in the near future, probably moving the three larger snakes out into a cage stack in my bedroom and reorganize the smaller bedroom. I have to decide if the crested geckos will stay in their extremely inconvenient tanks, get moved to bins, or if I try to build them something custom. In the last few months i did pick up two exo-terra terrariums and love the front opening doors. They were short ones so the leopard gecko and the sand boa each got a new easy to access home. Two of the big snakes are still in tanks, and the corn has really outgrown it, while the ball could get away with the tank size I can't deal with how much of a pain it is to open or clean the tanks. Once it warms up I'm building shelving racks to deal with the cages, and to hopefully set up two fish tanks in my living room, once the snake gets out of one of the tanks. The fish I've hung onto for years have gotten new accommodations and live in a new tank in the kitchen. I'm also considering garter snakes Red-Sided - Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis can be convinced to eat rodents, or some other interesting looking different species in the future as well, depends on how my house rearranging goes.

My Unbelievably Good Dog

So, Tuesday morning while being coerced (read told repeatedly then dragged so she'll stop whining at me and bouncing around) out of my bedroom Toka got a toenail stick in the threshold of the door. I thought is was just a broken nail and after getting her to stop bleeding all over the house (really, everywhere), wrapped it up to keep out the dirt until I could check it and put a dog boot on it. I got stuck working and finally looked it over last night. Mind you she hasn't been touching it, or chewing on it, and wasn't limping. I cut the wrap off and found she actually split one of her nails and has to go to the vet, to have it dealt with. That's not the interesting part for me.

My dog, who needs to be sedated for vet visits so she doesn't injure herself or anyone else, put up with standing in my bathtub with her injured foot in a bucket of water, for quite a while. She put up with my poking and prodding to get all the dried blood off so I could actually see her foot. She let me dry it, wrap it back up and put the boot back on and has gone back to ignoring her foot. I expected her to pull the boot off the moment she was left alone. I'm extremely impressed with her behavior. There was some grumbling, and I did need two people (thanks Mom!) to put the first wrap on, but wow.

She did just start limping this morning and at this moment is sleeping the sleep of the drugged while I wait for vet appointment time to come. (last time it took over three hours for her to start falling asleep, this time it was barely an hour, I might ask about lowering her dosage so she freaks me out less, she'll still be a little loopy tonight I expect.)

Update: $55 later the nail is clipped and the dog is fine.

Downsizing Fish Tanks

I haven't made up my mind about what I'll be doing with the big tank, but most of the tiny fish are staying. The bigger unfriendly fish are getting rehomed. I might pick up a few harlequin rasboras to keep the single one I have left company as well. While digging through the tank I've found 4 fish I haven't noticed in years, 3 different kuhli loaches, and an extra candystripe pleco in the tank. I thought I only had one left.

Taking down the big tank is going to be sad. When I first started keeping fish my goal was a 75 gallon tank. Sadly, it took years to get to that point, and in the intervening years my interest and finances have waned. It has taught me a bit about interests. Suck it up and after the initial attempt go for what you want rather then taking tons of little steps in between. I wanted a 75 gallon planted tank with lots of lights and little fish. If I'd pooled all the money I spent on smaller tanks and stuff in the intervening years I could have gotten the tank and other setup bits easily enough. I might not have ended up with as many tanks (24 at one point), but I might have gotten what I wanted more, and I might be less annoyed with the tank now.

It's sad but right now I look at the big tank and see something taking up space in my living room using electricity I could do something else with. I still like the fish enough to keep them, but the big tank is just a drain, and though I thought of repopulating it I haven't for several months.

Dog Number Two

I should mention that when I bring my camera downstairs in the morning one of my dogs goes absolutely nuts, dancing and whining as if I have a steak in my hands. There may be hot dogs or other dog treats used in these photos, and they may spend a lot of time staring up at me trying to convince me they're cute enough for a treat. My sister's dog Deuce.Dog Deuce Snowy

Snowy Dog

Finally some snow that stuck around. Christmas is over, so my rush of working is waning. My family that was visiting has all gone home, and I just got my house back to clean. Time for a new year to begin and for me to get out and photograph something other then the dogs.

Newest Cat Scratching Post

I must make a new one of these every year or so. Abby had destroyed last year's, and was eying other things in my bedroom as replacements. As you can see I went basic this time. It's a 2 x 4 with sisal rope wrapped around and stapled or glued as needed to keep it attached.

Please ignore the wires, I'm working on a way to hide them while making them accessible at the same time. The post is part of my redesigned desk. I removed some parts to make the desk bigger, then took leftover parts and added on to it to make it wider. I still need to figure out a real top for it, so at the moment it's different heights.

Content Kitty

My silly cat's nose is quite close to healing finally, so I expect her to bash it on something any day now.

Cat Bed

I'm on a little reorganization kick. My goal is removing clutter and adding space to my house. Getting things into drawers or cabinets so I don't have to dust is an extra goal. I moved my bed and finally have space in my bedroom for my bed, two dog beds and a cat bed without tripping all over them. The cat bed is actually stuck inside my nightstand. The nightstand had two drawers but the bottom one was useless (read full of junk), so I removed it and the drawer slide and put the cat bed in there. She seems quite happy about the arrangement. When spring rolls around I'm going to take it outside and alter it with both a paint job and some structural changes to the top (glue on cork). Next up is reworking my desk so I actually have a work surface, storage and my computer will be a bit better protected from dust, dirt and dog hair.

I lied

I did go outside, but didn't bring a camera. That leaves you with more reptile pictures. Here's my bitey crested gecko who recently got downgraded to a 10 gallon tank due to space constraints in the room. On a positive note, I just passed 40,000 words.

NaNoWriMo Word Count:

40026 / 50000
(80.05%)

Spike

I promise I'll go outside this weekend, as soon as I finish my writing.

NaNoWriMo Word Count:

34024 / 50000
(68.05%)

Crested Gecko

She set herself up so nicely. Too bad I didn't have the better flash on hand. The in camera flash sets off pre-flashes which get crested gecko eyes down to slits.

NaNoWriMo Word Count:

32044 / 50000
(64.09%)

It's a Dog Week

I'm busy writing, so here's my mother's dog, who is no where near as old as this picture makes her look. She's the youngest of the bunch. I won't post my sister's dog, the few of her in focus came out looking a little evil, sorry Deuce.

NaNoWriMo Word Count:

30034 / 50000
(60.07%)

Leafy Dog

And of course here's Toka with a nice seasonally appropriate background.

NaNoWriMo Word Count:

28036 / 50000
(56.07%)

Boomer

I just realized Boomer hasn't been on here before. I had a seasonal photo shoot with the dogs over the weekend (hot dogs and four dogs gets interesting) and Boomer looked good. So here's my second dog who gets much less face time since he's so much more laid back.

NaNoWriMo Word Count:

26005 / 50000
(52.01%)

Reptile Room

The critters are just about all organized the way I want.  The corn snake cage now has heat installed, and the other cages are almost all off the floor. There is only one cage on the desk in there, and I'm done enough to start writing in that nice warm room. Of course I still have some goals in the room. The bigger ball python will eventually get a cage like the new corn snake one, and the smaller one will hopefully be re homed soon. She's back to a good weight and health from when I picked her up, so I'm happy to pass her on to a new owner. I have two crested geckos I will likely try to re home, an older male who hates handling and other geckos, and a young female that I ended up with hoping for a male who also isn't in to handling. I'm keeping cages to upgrade the few critters not quite big enough for their adult cages as well.