A little tale of caution I think and a lesson learnt on my part...!
A friend of mine got in touch with me through Facebook about a T enclosure he had sat around doing nothing and asked if I would like it...naturally I said yes and duly went round and picked it up the other weekend.
He informed me it had been approx 18 months since the T was in it, a rather psychotic B. vagans by all accounts, well it came with a log retreat, piece of cork bark, substrate, heat mat, water bowl, false plant and polystyrene back drop to mimic a rock formation....and it's an exo terra (12x12x12)...result...!
So I get it home and duly place Roxy my G.rosea into it thinking nothing of it. After an hour or so I went to check on her (false plant wasn't in btw) and I noticed I hadn't give her any water (ooops!!!!) so I opened up the enclosure and went for her water bowl only for her to basically go for my hand...!! no threat posture, no kicking of hairs she literally went for my hand...!! the only thing I could think of was she must be able to sense the other T that had been in there(?) so I decided to empty the enclosure this meant placing her in a little plastic container (the type used by Chinese takeaways) which I use when I'm doing a bit of housekeeping on her tank, she tagged it twice...!!! that made me jump...she's a lot quicker than I thought.
I eventually got her into the temp box, emptied her new enclosure, thoroughly cleaned it and the "furniture", dried it and placed substrate from her old enclosure in it and the "furniture" back in and she seems a lot more settled and is back to doing her "thing" which is basically nothing much except sitting by the heat mat...!
So a valuable lesson was learnt...2nd hand enclosures are to be cleaned before rehousing and don't take it for granted that G. rosea are as docile as I first thought. I'm not saying all G. rosea are like this, I believe this was my fault as I had placed her way out of her "comfort zone" and she may have sensed another T in the vicinity and as I've placed my hand in she thought it was the other T...viable theory I think and if she did tag me then it was my own doing...!!
A friend of mine got in touch with me through Facebook about a T enclosure he had sat around doing nothing and asked if I would like it...naturally I said yes and duly went round and picked it up the other weekend.
He informed me it had been approx 18 months since the T was in it, a rather psychotic B. vagans by all accounts, well it came with a log retreat, piece of cork bark, substrate, heat mat, water bowl, false plant and polystyrene back drop to mimic a rock formation....and it's an exo terra (12x12x12)...result...!
So I get it home and duly place Roxy my G.rosea into it thinking nothing of it. After an hour or so I went to check on her (false plant wasn't in btw) and I noticed I hadn't give her any water (ooops!!!!) so I opened up the enclosure and went for her water bowl only for her to basically go for my hand...!! no threat posture, no kicking of hairs she literally went for my hand...!! the only thing I could think of was she must be able to sense the other T that had been in there(?) so I decided to empty the enclosure this meant placing her in a little plastic container (the type used by Chinese takeaways) which I use when I'm doing a bit of housekeeping on her tank, she tagged it twice...!!! that made me jump...she's a lot quicker than I thought.
I eventually got her into the temp box, emptied her new enclosure, thoroughly cleaned it and the "furniture", dried it and placed substrate from her old enclosure in it and the "furniture" back in and she seems a lot more settled and is back to doing her "thing" which is basically nothing much except sitting by the heat mat...!
So a valuable lesson was learnt...2nd hand enclosures are to be cleaned before rehousing and don't take it for granted that G. rosea are as docile as I first thought. I'm not saying all G. rosea are like this, I believe this was my fault as I had placed her way out of her "comfort zone" and she may have sensed another T in the vicinity and as I've placed my hand in she thought it was the other T...viable theory I think and if she did tag me then it was my own doing...!!
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