Gravid K. tavetana

[Mike Fisher]

A couple photos of a newly acquired female Kinyongia tavetana.

 

[Chase]

Good luck getting her to lay. She looks sassy!

Chase

 

[MelissaB]

She's lovely! Love the green in her face.

 

[CarlC]

She looks really good Mike! Nice body condition.

Carl

 

[Mike Fisher]

Thanks everybody! She's a real chow hound so I have good feelings about successful laying. I have one other that might be in an early stage of gravidity and a couple others that show no signs. Since I have no males here, we'll just see what happens.

 

[Mike Fisher]

eggs

Dug up 14 eggs this morning. Trying something different with the medium 2/3 perlite, 1/3 vermiculite fines. I usually do all perlite with .25" standing water at the bottom but last clutch of K. multi. eggs I had a couple of them rupture from being too wet. Gonna run it with no water at the bottom, with the vermiculite fines helping hold more moisture in the medium.

 

[RyU]

I do mine with coarse vermiculite top with a sandy bottom. I always try to stay a bit drier rather than wet...

 

[Mike Fisher]

I do mine with coarse vermiculite top with a sandy bottom. I always try to stay a bit drier rather than wet...

I've always done mine with standing water at the bottom with a thick layer of perlite so that the top is pretty dry. It just kind of percolates through the medium. I must have went a bit overboard with the water in that one clutch. Just wanted to try something different this time. I figure with two different mediums mixed together, even if the perlite gets a bit dry, the vermiculite will still be moist.

What I believe happened in that one clutch is that it got a bit dry and the shells hardened a bit, then when I noticed, I hyper-hydrated them and the shells were a bit inflexible so a few popped. It's tough when you have to wait a year or more. I don't like to mess with the eggs too much so i missed that they were getting dry until I picked up the box and it felt light as a feather. Then I panicked and added too much water all at once.

 

[Chase]

I must say I've never heard of that method, Mike. I know at work, we use slightly moist perlite, and to be honest, I hate it. Anything else I've incubated, I've used 100% vermiculite. To me, it was way easier to keep moisture levels under control

Chase

 

[Mike Fisher]

I had poor luck with vermiculite some 30 years ago. It is hard to judge moisture content from just looking at it. That's when I switched to perlite because I could keep a reservoir of water at the bottom and know I was ok just by looking though the side of the container. Of course, it helps if I take a peek now and again. That's how I screwed up on this last clutch. I'm thinking by doing the mixed media thing, I'll have a bit more leeway.

I really like using perlite. For our use it lasts basically forever and I just rinse it out after each clutch. It won't break down like vermiculite.

 

[Mike Fisher]

I must say I've never heard of that method, Mike.

AFAIK, I invented it.