As promised, today I'm doing a review of Fluker's Super Scrub, which I use to clean out my tank and as well as my plants and other decorum.
What I'd also like to do if I have the time today is write up a piece about my current findings on terrarium landscaping and what I'd personally like to try in my future habitats. That piece might come a little later though, since I've only really got vague ideas and a couple (dozen) YouTube videos of knowledge so far.
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Product Review 4: Super Scrub by Fluker's
Cleaning is an important part of any animal care in order to maintain good health and well-being. Not to mention the fact that a dirty tank is a smelly tank. But it's really hard to find good cleaners that are viable, non-toxic options. My family's had zebra finch die just from using a scrubber which had come into contact with some harsh cleaners a while before and had since been washed and rinsed several times. Since then, I've been super anal about what I use to clean and dry my tank and habitat objects.
Since the very beginning, I've been using Fluker's Super Scrub for my cresty, and I've had no issues. I would think it's safe for any reptile. Amphibians might be a different story, what with their extreme sensitivity to their environments.
Overall Rating:9/10
Pros:
Cleans organic off fecal matter well and leaves a nice fresh smell that isn't at all overbearing (at least to me). Also hasn't so far left any streaks on my glass.
Cons:
The brush that comes with the cleaner is pretty rigid and should NOT be used on foam backgrounds. I've already damaged mine a bit by trying to give it a scrub down.
Comments:
Despite the brush issue, I still really like this product so far. In truth, I don't use the brush for much else. I find just dumping a bit of the cleaner in a tub of distilled or treated water (JurassiSafe for the win) and scrubbing with my fingers to be more than adequate.
Images: This product can be seen in lots of my images, off in the peripherals. But, in case you were wondering, this is what you get.
Short and sweet, I hope this can help someone out there. I wish I would of had it before that one person searched my blog for an answer, but hind sight is 20/20.
I think I will wait for tomorrow to write up my summary of my research into custom habitat design, so that I can do a bit of research into what kind of plants would work best in my case. Also, there are some pretty good documentaries on Oasis tonight, and I have the house majoritarily to myself, so a bit of rest is what I shall have tonight.
Also, personal note, I really enjoyed the open house on enviro-tech yesterday! I'm going to make my online application either later tonight or tomorrow, but there shouldn't be any issues. I should have all the qualifying high-school courses, as least on paper. In any case, there are some refresher courses I can take. Always a possibility.
As promised, I'm tossing up a product review today. After my last two product reviews, I realized I was waiting to get new products in order to write reviews when I should also be reviewing the products I've already got. Kind of a dumb moment on my part. So today, I'm reviewing one of the most important aspects of the habitat: the terrarium, and for anyone who's read this blog before, you know exactly which product that is.
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Product Review 3: Terrarium by Exo-Terra
For this review, I'm doing more of a generalization of all Exo-Terra terrariums based solely on my mini-sized terrarium. Since most of the features I'll be noting are available on all models, I think this will be fine. Obviously, my critiques will not be size-based (because, hey... size doesn't matter).
Overall Rating:9/10
Pros:
Great front and top access, particularly because of the two door system, which makes it so you don't have to open the entire front of your habitat. The accesses secure nicely, making escape pretty much impossible.
Good ventilation from both the front grill and top screen, the later of which is a pretty strong mesh, making it tougher than screen lids I've used in the past.
The little details that really make this a great product are ones you might not even use or even realize exist. The bottom is kept just off the ground, giving sufficient room to pass cables for any under-mounted heating pads or to slide in light stand footings, like I do. The top's wire and cable inlets are really handy, and even have a sliding blocker to close off the unused inlets.
Also, probably one of the most prominent features, it works very well with the other Exo-Terra brand products, as well as those by other companies.
Cons:
Not many, and I really had to dig deep to stop myself giving this product a 10, but the top lid can be temperamental to put back on. When you have an arboreal critter that likes to bolt by climbing even higher up, this can get messy. It's especially tough when you have tubes, like the ones used in the Monsoon system, tucked away up top.
Also, being that there are two doors, there's a small area in each front corner that often catches plants and other objects because of the way it opens.
Comments:
Just to clarify, the utility inlets are a great idea, it's just that they're fairly tight on water tubing. I worry that each time I try to squeeze them back in, I might pinch the cable and cause some really unwanted spraying to occur. I could fix this, but I would really have to cut into the background, since the tubing obviously can't be bent at a perfect 90 degree angle. Back before I had the Monsoon system, though, it was fine.
Images:
Well, pretty much all my images I host here feature the terrarium, but I'll toss in some newer ones showing off my newest fauna.
It just so happend that my Monsoon system went off as I was taking this shot.
I think I need to clean out a nozzle again, as it's kind of in Super Soaker mode.
So that's it for today's review. I think that tomorrow I will review the cleaning product I use, firstly because it's an important product and also because I noticed someone visiting my site after trying a Google search on weather or not the product is safe to use with crested geckos. So, to that one Googler out there, I will make a nod, as well an any possible future hobbyists who may want to expand their knowledge.
Oh, on a personal note, tomorrow is an open house at my local college for people interested in the video game design and environmental technician courses. It's like fate, really, I swear. So, after that, I will write up another review, since I was away for pretty much a full moth.
I've been on hiatus for the last month doing nothing of particular interest, though that doesn't mean I've lost my interest. In fact, I've been looking into new ways to improve my current setup, not to mention what I'd like to get for possible future pets.
Since it HAS been a while, I feel I need to organize my thoughts and experiences, so to begin, I'll give some status updates.
Rocza
He's doing well in terms of health, so far as I can see. He's noticeably bigger than when I first got him and from what I sometimes hear at night and by the droppings left strewn around his tank, he's not shying away from exploring his habitat.
Still, though, he doesn't much like being handled yet. In all fairness, the times I have handled him involved putting him in his carrying tank to clean out his habitat, so it was probably pretty stressful. I've been interacting with him when I see he's awake, so hopefully, I'll one day be able to get him out of his shell, metaphorically speaking, because he's a gecko, not a turtle.
I fed him some crickets yesterday while I had some company over, and he's just as vicious to them as he used to be (not sure if I logged this, but I had tried giving him crickets a week ago and he didn't so much as taste it). He's also going through about 1/4 teaspoon of Repashy a night, so I'm really not worried about his diet.
And lastly, I think he's molted again, and happily, his orange colour isn't dulling! I'm fairly psyched about this. Since I started looking around online, I haven't really seen many other orange harlequins, so I guess he's something of a special little guy.
Natural Habitats
I've been looking into ways of turning my future habitat into a natural one. Or, as natural as I can. What I'm worried about though is cleaning. I don't really know how i would clean out a terrarium without having to replant the fauna each time. I figure that if I find a way to compartmentalize the substrate, I could get by this problem by being able to leave the plants rooted while cleaning out the rest of the tank. I'd have to look into this a bit more before getting a decent idea.
I also thought about stacking some rocks and branches and filling in the crevices with substrate instead, but this idea leaves me nervous about weight issues. I've seen some really nice foam-based waterfalls on YouTube (that I will post a link to presently), and that principal could really be used to make some custom backdrops, and maybe even some designated planting zones with adequate drainage. I'm even trying to think about ways to incorporate natural elements like wood and stone into the foam construction to create a hybrid natural/artificial backdrop and base combo.
I should probably draw some sketches. bitches love sketches, and so do I. While I contemplate that, boom, video. The narrator and I assume creator has what I think is so far the best YouTube review/how-to voice so far. Kind of like a Southern Jeff Goldblum. Or not. The video is put up by Lizard Landscapes. I'll definitely be looking into these guys.
I also saw the first desert habitat that blew my mind. This guy made a sort of "Temple of Doom" look with a human skull as the entrance to a burrow that had a red heat lamp behind it. Sounds cheesy but it looked super cool. I'll try to find the link and post it as well. It kind of renewed my hope of getting a bearded dragon, or maybe a leopard gecko.
Now in terms of plants, I've been told pothos are great, and I'm definitely noticin Rocza favouring his amapallo over either of his croton. I'd love to get some of Exo-Terra's big, broad-leaf plants for the sterile setup, but they're just too big for my current habitat. I'd also like to add a splash of colour. I will definitely do a little digging (haha, pun) into some live plant species that I could use. Maybe stop by one of the local nurseries. I know the daughter of the owner of Harvest, maybe I'll stop in and say "hi".
Oh, and one more video. Boom.
Future Pets
Well, I've been watching Oasis HD some more. I found this awesome doc on monitor lizards. I guess they're some of the most intelligent lizards out there. They showed this amazing dragon at the London Zoo that would actually let his handler pet him and rub him. He jsut showed no signs of hostility. If I had to compare it to something, it looked liek a big scaly dog. Now don't get me wrong, I know Komodo dragons are not pets, but there are smaller monitors out there.
Not only do I find them really cool to look at, the also climb, swim, dig, and actively hunt for food rather than waiting for it to come by. All in all, they just look like a cool pet to have. Definitely something I'm considering for a the distant future (like when I have a really large amount of space to dedicate to it).
Also looking into what I want to put in my current tank once I have my new one to contend with, and though I would love some tree frogs or poison dart frogs, I also have to take into account what my current cohabitants will allow in the house. So, I'm thinking a day gecko. Not only are they diurnal, they live in very similar habitats to my cresty. They're also really nicely coloured. So far though, they're pretty hard to find around here, from what I can tell.
Miscellaneous
So I've been contemplating my future from time to time and I'm really feeling that I'd be much happier goign for something related to the environment over video game design. The same college I was planning on attending offers an environmental technician course. I think I might shift over to that.
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Well, I think I'll call it for now, but I will come back tomorrow with a product review, the promised pictures of Rocza's current habitat, and maybe even some research into further tank-scaping techniques I might look into.
Well, I've been out and about for a little while now, what with our household getting HD cable (including Oasis! Yay!), friends about to leave town, and St-Paddy's Day, but now it's high time I got back to posting.
Well, Rocza's still proving to be fairly shy and reclusive (guess the pets reflect the master after all...), but he seems to be in good health. I've noticed fairly regular bowel movements around the habitat, which is definitely a good sign. Cricket feeding is now about three to four times a week; four crickets on Tuesdays and Saturdays, one cricket one Sunday and Thursday.
After having spoke with Emily about how hard it was for her to ween her gecko off crickets and get him eating Repashy, I was pretty worried. As it turns out, Rocza loves the stuff. I offered him some with a popsicle stick for something a little softer than the steel tongs and he ate it right up. Unfortunately, I'm not sure he's finding his elevated food dish which contains the Repashy. I get the feeling the little guy is slightly agoraphobic.
So, to give him a better sense of privacy, I've started putting up a shroud around his habitat at night to cut back on the ambient light he's getting (like from my computer and the light on the Monsoon RS 400). Since then, I've actually been able to observe him moving around and exploring more, even hanging upside-down on the screen top. I've also bought him some extra foliage. I went with a second synthetic croton plant, though this one is by Zoo Med. I got to admit, it's "arms" really form a nice, leafy alcove for sleeping. I placed it on the open side of the feeding ledge to entice Rocza out onto it.
The more lush, green colour kind of contrasts my other plants, but it looks good. I also like the more rubbery feel. As it turns out, so does Rocza, I guess. He's moved out of the amapallo and taken up new residence. Hopefully he stays in that one. He's far more exposed to view and this will hopefully have him feeling more comfortable around me.
Also, though I can't be sure, since he's taken up residence, he might have also discovered his food dish. So I hope anyway. I would love to reduce his cricket consumption to twice a week, but I don't want to till I'm positive he's able to forage his own food.
As far as I can tell, he's not thinning out. In fact, after I saw some baby cresties at a another local pet store today, I think he's even growing.
Pictures of the current habitat to come tomorrow (later "today") as I don't want to take down Rocza's shroud and start shooting while he's active.
The posts got a little delayed due to me not feeling super great for a bit, but here they are! Bright, shiny and smelling like spring.
Also, I received my bag of Repashy today! Hooray!
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Product Review 1: Monsoon RS 400 by Exo-Terra
As you might guess, this is a product I've been interested in from the very begining. Not only did the concept of a rainfall system seem way too cool to me, the idea of not having to worry about misting every morning, day and night really appealed to my lazy/forgetful side.
As such, I feel my expectations may have been pretty high from the get go. So, keeping that in mind, I'm pretty happy to say that the RS 400 met almost all my expectations!
Overall Rating:8/10
Pros: The pros are pretty much as I though; easy to use, easy to assemble, easy to fill, effective, and so on and so forth. I really feel as though I could leave for a couple days and not have to worry about watering... just feeding. But feeding has nothing to do with this system, so I can't fault it for that. Aside from what I already expected, I have to say that the nozzles don't stick out quite as much as I was afraid they would. I kind of hid them away in the leaves, which you can see below in the pictures.
Cons: Though the system is made to take advantage of the Exo-Terra terrarium's cable and tube conduits on the lid, I feel like the two systems weren't designed in tandem, especially with a foam backboard installed. The way I have it installed now, I feel as though there is way too much pressure on the tubing because there just isn't the right amount of room back there. To be fair, that's good in a sense. I don't want Rocza or his food slipping in back of anything. On the down side, should the tight squeeze puncture the tubing, that's a fine jet of water spraying all around my nice shiny electronic toys. I really wish I had a better place to put it... but till then, I'm keeping an eye on it, and I've reshuffled the room a bit to accommodate. Also in reference to the space issue is the fact that the lid to the terrarium is now twice as hard to put back on, and it was tricky from the start. Also, yeah, the nozzles aren't super obvious, but they're still very much present. I also find that though they do articulate, it's never quite the way I want them to be. Not a big issue though.
Comments: Neither pro nor con, I noticed that too much hose means a crappy spray. What I though might have been a clogged nozzle actually turned out to be a lack of pressure due to the small hole and the length of tube. Once I trimmed the punctured part off, it worked just fine. Not bad for second hand, really. The cycle light is also super bright. My computer has some nice lighting on it and... I mean it's almost on par with this one little light. Nothing a piece of tape or a sock can't fix...
NOTE: I've recently bumped this down to an 8, as from time to time, the nozzles start to spray pretty harshly. So far, I've been able to fix this by jiggling the tubing, but it's still annoying. Also, after reviewing the rest of the cons, it just didn't add up to a 9.
Images:
Left-hand nozzle coming out of the amapallo plant.
Right-hand nozzle coming out of the croton plant
My new canopy section, complete with feeding ledge.
Product Review 2: Magnaturals Feed and Water Ledge by Pet Tech
I still can't believe the luck I had finding this product. I really want to go back to Big Al's and just buyout the lot of everything I want. Sadly, that would hurt my wallet. It's not cheap, but so far, well worth the price.
Overall Rating: 10/10
Pros: It's a ledge, it's a bowl, it's magnetic. What more could one ask for? The dish comes out easily and is replaced easily. The whole of it is light-weight, and the magnets are immensely strong, so it feels like it could support a small gecko-sized elephant. It's foam, so it doesn't absorb and it's easy to clean, though admittedly, I haven't had to clean any crap off it yet. And above all else, it looks crazy-good!
Cons: Well... If you have a weak grip on the magnet while attaching it, I guess you could bust your glass. That's about all I have to say about that.
Comments: Above and beyond the pros? Not much to say, really. I'd love to say that Rocza loves it as much as I do, but the little guy enjoy his privacy. So far as I can tell, he hasn't ventured out onto it yet. As tonight is cricket feeding night, I plan on changing that. Oh! One comment; it was bigger than I had anticipated. That's about it.
Images:
The earth-toned colour really fits in well with colour-scheme of my set.
Just posting this a preliminary post to the two that will follow.
It's been about a day now that I've used the Monsoon system, so I'll give you my input on it. Also, just got back from my birthday trip to Ottawa for some fancy sea-food nom noms, as well as a little pet store shopping. PetSmart was about the same as always. Same stuff as the one in town, just more of it, which is okay for your all-around pet care. I definitely need to update my info regarding Big Al's. That place is a gold mine! I had more than (literally) ten minutes to look this time, since I got there at a decent hour, and I'm totally in awe of the amount of great stuff they have. I thought the place looked small at first, it's not, it's huge, their fish section also has reptiles and amphibians, the had an eel, it was awesome!
Best part? They sell Magnaturals! Like everything. All I wanted. Sadly, it's all bigger than I though, so I didn't buy everything I wanted for lack of space, which consisted of the small hideaway and some hanging jungle plants. What I did get was the feeding dish, and yes, that's the one I just did a product research bit on. It got me totally by surprise. I really didn't expect to find a store that would stock Pet Tech. Pet Depot has a couple, but they tell me their supplier is kind of going to stop selling it. It was obviously more expensive than the listed online price, but once you factor in shipping and exchange, it came out much cheaper in the long run. Well, more like short run, shipping would have taken way longer.
So, to follow will be my review of my two new products: the Monsoon RS 400 and the Magnaturals Feed and Water ledge.
Oh and a little post script here:
Fed Rocza again today, since I'm still waiting on the crummy US postal service to get my Repashy to the freaking border so our crummy Canadian post can take its sweet time getting it to me. Yeah, I have issues with the postal service. Bad experiences, old and new. Amazon informed me I would have my Repashy by... let's see, last Friday and when I checked last Friday, it was still in Miami or some crap.
Anywho, just fed him once cricket today, since it's between feedings. But, the little bugger still looked hungry (after he bit the cricket in two, leaving me holding half), so I got my sneaky on and stuck a few pellets of his thus-far untouched gecko food to the end of the feeding tongs with some water and got him to try a bit. He didn't seem to mind it, but he either lost his interest or his appetite and crawled back into his bushy lair.
