If you could set it up any way you wanted...

[hurricanejen]

Say you were given the reins for a colony of blue tongue skinks. 20 - 30 animals, you select what you want to keep, how you want to keep them, and what to feed them in an entire room dedicated just to them.

How would you do it? What dream skinks would you add to the collection, would you start a selective breeding project, create your own diet (with 20 to 30 of them, you'd have enough to warrant buying bulk quantities of foods to create your meal plan), just... what would you do?

Let's hear it. I'm curious

-Jen

[xxmonitorlizardxx]

I would have a group of:Classic Meraukes, Yellow Indonesians, Dark Indonesians, Albino Indonesians, Axanthic Indonesians, Snow Indonesians, Kei Islands, Silver Tanimbars, and Patternless Gigas spp.
I would keep them like I keep Blueberry just in a bigger cage. That would be a 48x24x24 inch cage. It would have about three to four inches of sandy dirt mixed with eco earth and have a layer of either leaves or cypress mulch on top. It would have a bunch of cork bark, exo-terra caves, and plant pot hides. It would have a Retes Stack that gets to about 125 degrees farenheight. There would be a water bowl and a couple of plants.
I would feed roaches, worms, snails, and mice for the meat portion of the diet and various leafy vegetables, squashes, and bell pepper for the vegetable portion.

[Richard.C]

Id just do what i do now,if i could keep them outdoors they would be outdoors,i intend to experiment witj setting some others updoors

[Scotts1au]

Drunk again Richard?

[Richard.C]

Haha,unfortunatly cant use that excuse scott,been a couple of years since i consumed anything alcoholic

[UroFreak13]

Good for you

[hurricanejen]

What if keeping them outside wasn't an option, or only partially an option?

You're stuck with a giant room you have to keep these 30 skinks in. As cool as that sandy soil mix sounds, I'd imagine maintaining it for 30 skinks to get quite cumbersome and time consuming...

[xxmonitorlizardxx]

If you spot clean and have a bio active substrate it'll be fine. The bluey will stay on the top layer of mulch/leaves predominately.

[Richard.C]

At the moment its just blotchies and a few easterns outdoors,with cunningham skinks and a harem of female water dragons of the eastern variety,i intend to experiement with arid temperate dwellers outdoors in the near future,but in mostly covered enclosures to keep it dry,cold damps a no no for most of them

Similar to what i do with my desert sand monitors but minus the heating

Northerns centralians will be staying indoors,to cold here for them,ill probably keep what i have indoors now anyways,its fun to be able to watch them closer,but would be great to watch some outdoors in bigger groups ect to,more to the point saves on electricity and i think they like the space and variability of being outdoors to


Ml let us know how that substrate idea goes,should be ok cleaning wise,large monitors make blueys seem constipated in comparison poop wise,so should be fine to spot clean,the humidity in the leaf litter i could see being enjoyed by them,options to be dry or moister ect is always good

[xxmonitorlizardxx]

Ml let us know how that substrate idea goes,should be ok cleaning wise,large monitors make blueys seem constipated in comparison poop wise,so should be fine to spot clean,the humidity in the leaf litter i could see being enjoyed by them,options to be dry or moister ect is always good

It has been working very well! Blueberry likes to forage in the top layer(mulch) for worms and is very active. He uses the higher basking temps and isn't getting burned. And he made two "nests", one is in his cave where he moved the sphagnum moss around to his liking and the other is under a cork bark piece where he pushed away all of the mulch exposing the eco-earth/sandy soil mix and then he created a depression in the ground where he likes to lay(like you said they do). He also put some moss in that area. He knocks down the plant I have in there sometimes but its doing fine he will lay under it sometimes.
I'm also using an only mice and feeders diet for his meat portion. I now see some levels of intelligence in him when he looks for food and retrieves food when they burrow away or hide in the cork bark.