New Brookesia owner. Please help with ID and any tips and tricks for acclimation

[Mendez]

You can put a slice of banana in with the babies and hope to draw in small flies while you wait for food. When this years Brookesia supercilaris hatched, they were also a surprise. Luckily I had some fungats gnats in there for them to eat. They went 3 or 4 days without me supplying vendor-bought feeders.

A few helpful tips when raising up pygmies is 1) keep them very humid and 2) feed them crickets as soon as you can.

For humidity, I put the pygmies in a clear storage container that you can purchase at Target. I then cut out an rectangle spaning the majority of the lid and hot glued mesh on top. That's the only ventilation they have. I didn't drill any additional holes on the side to get a chimney effect or anything. This holds the humidity quite well.

Since pygmies hatch out pretty small, they really need all the humidity they can get. If they are constantly losing water from low humidity, their bodies won't grow as much, or as fast.

As for the crickets, I noticed that this years babies have grown significantly faster than last years. I never bought fruit flies. I skipped them and fed pinhead crickets. Just make sure you are getting true pinheads. True pinheads are smaller than melanogaster fruit flies. And I always buy around 500 of them. When first feeding, they are a little small. But after a week or so, those crickets are slightly bigger so I feed a little less. It ends up working pretty well. Its more expensive, but totally worth it.

 

[yoteango]

Thank you so much. It's out of the egg and sleeping on a leaf in that closed plastic shoebox. I'll update throughout the week.

I got some Melanogasters earlier today, and ordered some pinheads. I'll probably raid my isopod enclosures for some babies and hopefully that will more than suffice. What size bin do you use, and do you do those with a basic bioactive, like just soil and grass seeds and some small cleanup crew? It won't be established of course, but could be good for humidity, among other things.

 

[yoteango]

Second egg is hatching! He has been coming out all day, very slowly.

I was actually surprised this one would hatch. The egg was a little smaller than the other one, and also was leaking something oozy when I moved the egg to the perlite a couple weeks ago.

The other one moved around a bit this morning but has mostly been sleeping all day, I don't think I need to be worried yet though, he has been holding tight to the little leaves.

 

[yoteango]

A couple notes.

The first one seemed to have trouble opening his eyes yesterday and was rubbing them against stuff, but had them opened by the end so, hopefully it's nothing to worry about.

I should have buried the second egg a little more, I watched him struggle for a while to get out, I helped him out by putting down a cotton swab. Video is below. Also I wonder if pearlite is too abrasive and could rip off the yolk. I was a little worried about that. It worked for incubation (at least the last ~2.5 weeks lol), but I think vermiculite isn't as rough and is the better choice.

 

[yoteango]

Sorry to update and say that the babies didn't make it. The smaller one died suddenly after a couple days after not eating, and the other one also refused to eat for over a week and appeared to have eye problems.

I believe it was a failure to thrive, and that is likely a result of either nutrition of the mother, or care of the eggs. I think it was probably more the eggs and because they were kept warmer than they should, and even then, were in-situ for all but a couple weeks.

The mother is probably doing fine though since she has made 4 eggs in total, I'll watch in the future for when she is ready to lay. Mostly that will be to make sure I gutload crickets and dust anything I put in, instead of letting the terrarium provide. It's frustrating I failed hard enough that none of them made it. For the eggs, I will first be more diligent in looking for them and put together a proper cooling incubator. I have all the pieces saved, just waiting until it's needed.

 

[Mendez]

Sorry for your losses. It's always tough losing babies. Luckily this year I didn't incur any losses with my pygmies. All 5 Brookesia superciliaris are subadults now.

May I ask why you chose perlite to incubate the eggs? While perlite and vermiculite look similar, they act very differently. In general, vermiculite is much better at holding water and humidity than perlite. Perlite doesn't actually hold water and is used as an additive to substrates/soils to improve water drainage. If your soil is too dry and needs more moisture/humidity, you would add vermiculite. If you wanted the opposite, you would add perlite.

Perlite could theoretically work if you had a pool of water at the bottom of the cup that raised overall air humidity, but vermiculite is much better at raising overall humidity around the egg (air and contact humidity). In the wild, the soil/substrate is likely moist and in contact with the egg at all times. IMO vermiculite is the way to go. Just make sure you buy vermiculite with no additives. I ordered mine on Amazon.

 

[yoteango]

Thanks for the info. I made sure it was moist the entire time, just with a basic touch test if it would stick to my finger, but didn't realize how they were different, I had looked for vermiculite but didn't see any at Home Depot, and I wanted to stick them in some kind of substrate as soon as I found them. So that's the only real reason.