New U. sikorae

[uther886]

Hi there, I'm a new member to the forum and wanted to stop by to share my new additions. Below are pictures of my new U. sikorae. They are currently housed in quarantine tanks so that we can get fecal samples to our local vet (luckily for us, we live close to a vet that takes special interest in reptiles, especially geckos), but will soon be housed in a 24x18x24 Exo Terra that my girlfriend and I are currently constructing. It will have a bark background with Zoo Med twisty vines, some lichen covered branches and for plants we just took cuttings of Monstera siltepecana, Rhaphidophora hayi, Rhaphidophora pachyphylla, Syngonium rayii, Syngonium erythrophyllum, Philodendron grazeliae, Ficus pumila 'Quercifolia', and Marcgrevia species, plus we have a good sized Microsorum species and a Doryopteris nobilis to add in. We read that they aren't too thrilled to be on plants, but need them around to help with the humidity and to lick water off the leaves, so we'll be having most of the plants vining up the back and side walls. For the soil we'll be using a layer of hydroton balls with screen, and then a layer of ABG soil mix (tree fern, charcoal, fine orchid bark, peat moss, and milled sphagnum peat). We plan on having most of the floor be species of tropical moss, with some areas for leaf litter. Flora was locked up with a male inside the cage at the store the other day, so we'll need to be on the lookout for eggs soon, but we're having difficulty finding detailed instructions for sikorae, most seem to be written about phantasticus. Do the sikorae lay eggs under leaf piles as well or do they prefer to slightly bury them? We're hoping the leaf litter and soil mix will be enough, seeing as it would be hard for them to dig through. Any advice or words of wisdom are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Corwin:

Dara:

Florimel (Flora):

Fiona:

 

[pakinjak]

Nice animals, man. Sounds like you're planning well, the only thing I'd critique is the enclosure size. It's way to small for four U. sikorae, to go twice that height would be good.

 

[taylorgilbert]

im new here as well an patiently awaiting my sikorae i was wondering how you were going to pack that many plants into that size enclosure without over crowding it i saw that becuase i just furnished a temporary exo terra an tried to pack a bunch of plants but couldnt without eating up all available floor space, though im not as worried since im working on a 24x18x48 enclosure an this is only temp.

 

[uther886]

All of the plants except for 2 are either vines or can be made to grow up a back wall, or are what are known as shingle plants, meaning they lay completely flat on whatever background or tree they are growing up. The two that won't be on the back wall, one is an epiphytic fern, meaning it will be mounted up on a branch, and one is an 18"-24" tall fern that has long slender stems and large fronds at the very tip, so it's excellent for providing cover but won't take up very much ground space. Here's a picture of it, not mine, but still a great pic.. The ground floor will mostly be made up of live moss and leaf litter.

 

[Hannibal]

Gorgeous Sikoraes, but agree...you need a much bigger/taller enclosure if you plan to house them all together.

 

[uther886]

We're going to be adding a second pair, depending on how well these do, and splitting them up into two trios. The importer only had 2 females and 16 males, so we wanted to get whatever extra females available while we could. My girlfriend is building a dart frog vivarium in the living room this summer, one of the new 3'x18"x3' Exo Terra's, and there will be room under the stand for another 24"x18"x24" Exo Terra.

 

[uther886]

Just a quick update on the cage progress. We water proofed the base of the background about 2" up with black silicone and a putty knife so that the drainage layer won't soak the bark too much. We then added almost 2" of hydroton topped with a layer of screen and a layer of ABG mix. We finished baking the lichen covered branches last night and miter cut them to fit more snugly into the cage. The silicone holding the vines in place should be cured by tomorrow, and then it will be time to start adding the plants and moss. Here's a picture of the silicone water proofing, branch dry fit before the silicone, and also of some of the plants in the propagation tank.