water bowls

[lemon1]

Do you skinks go in their water dish . Mine are too big for their dish so I am wondering if I should get a bigger dish or if it's ok to be used only for water to drink . Pekoe always pees and poos in the dish ALWAYS .

[Linnea]

nope. my skink just uses it as a temporary headpillow or walks right over it.

though he seems to enjoy taking a warm, shallow bath (when being helped remove leftover shed)

[Jeff]

Some do, some don't. It is pretty much an individual thing. I give all of my skinks a large bowl at all times. That way it is available if they want it, but many of them never crawl through it or sit in it.

[lemon1]

Do your use it as a toilet ? lol

[Jeff]

I have around 30 skinks right now. Three or four of them use their water bowl as a toilet fairly regularly. The rest almost never do. It has never made sense to me why they would do that. It seems like their instincts would tell them not to foul the one and only water source available to them. I kinda wonder if the ones that do might be the ones that don't possess the cognitive qualities that they would need to survive in the wild.

[Lea]

Jeff, that sounds plausible. I have 4 rescued shinglebacks outside and they wouldn't dream of dirtying up their dishes with poop or wee. One of my more "domestic" shinglebacks, this is a while ago now, used to live in the water bowl, literally all day AND sometimes all night! If she happened to be passing over it when the urge came, well, she just went. She'd drink from it, bathe in it, sleep in it ... but she was special

I have to say, though, I think out of the skinks I've had, she'd be the only guilty one. I have also found that if you "clutter up" the bowl, or make it harder for them to perch their bottoms over it comfily, a deeper dish, maybe, they don't even get tempted to walk through it. It cuts down the ease to bathe also, so if you think your skink enjoys a leisurely loll about in the deep blue, then this option is probably not for you.

[Katrina]

A couple of mine do fairly regularly. Maybe I have some special needs skinks. I'm not sure that any of mine put a ton of thought into where they go, water dish or not.

Rollie is a bit of a poop painter, not as bad as Hijinx was though.

[Musoke]

Elliot doesn't usually go inside, he just likes to rest his head on it and drink now and then. Sometimes he'll slide into his dish from one of his rocks/plants though, then he'll crawl right out.
Jude seems like to walk through her water dish, but she doesn't usually sit in it.

An upside to getting a bigger water dish is that if the temps are ever too warm, it gives them a place to cool off.

It seems pie dishes are what lots of people on here use in their tanks. You can also buy large ones made for reptiles if you like a more natural look (I personally do, I love pretty terreriums for them!), but they're really all the same to the skink.

[Kbell31]

Mine walks through it occasionally, and I have seen her drink from it once or twice. Thankfully I have yet to find any "business" in the bowl. Hopefully that doesnt happen. I just use a brown terra cotta plant saucer for mine, which would be similar to a pie plate just not glass.

[Coomassie]

Coomassie has a large dish (actually meant for tortoises) and he runs through it, sleeps under it, and uses it as a pillow. I've never seen him soak in it but that doesn't mean he never has. Also, he has never pooed in it.

[WanderingChai]

Tea Cup likes to drink a lot of water, but mostly just climbs through her water dish. She has yet to spoil it. However, she thinks it is a very fun game to push all of her bedding as possible into her water.

[Lauriek]

My shingles tend to want to tip their water dish over - the blotchies don't.