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So the other day I was chatting with the new interns, two of which have reptiles at home. The topic of alligators and UVB came up and how they grow better in complete darkness then in natural day length lighting. I had done a paper on the commercial growing alligators in school so I just spat out the answer from my paper. The fact that gators have bone plats in their hide and that the hide itself is so think UV do not penetrate to the lower skin levels. Because the UV cannot penetrate it make scenes that gators either produce or get their Vit D and Vit from their food. With night like conditions it also stimulates the feeding behavior of gators so they eat more and grow faster. That is a three page section in a nut shell.
It was not until I got home that this had me thinking about Caiman Lizards and UVB. I know tegus its very important to have UV, with monitors it varies from species to species. One thought is that it depends on the skin, a dry leathery skinned animal may not UVB as much as a smooth thinner skinned reptile, take a savy monitor as the thick skinned and a tegu as the smooth skinned.
So where does this leave the newly popular, semi-aquatic, platy and smooth skin Caiman Lizard. Do they need UVB like their tegu cousins or is it not needed at all like their caiman namesake?
I was going to just going to reason this out in my head but looking over my logs I found something odd. A few weeks ago my female tegu had some tremoring in her front leg. Not too bad but I wanted to get out in front of this, she had a high calcium diet of whole animal and everything else was dusted like crazy. I keep records of what bulb is how old and when it was bough. My records said they bulb was only 3 months old, the one Bacardi has is 8 months and the year and a half year bulb was in the box ( I keep the old bulb around just for heat incase one of the newer bulbs burns out). Well I unscrew the bulb and it’s the 8 month bulb, so I buy a new one and sure enough both lizards perk up. I figured I had mixed up the lights when I moved them down to my moms so no big deal. I open the box to the old bulb and to my surprise it’s the newer bulb, it had only been used for less than a month! So the bulb I have had for over a year has been in Bacardi’s cage for about 3 to 4 months now and he is still growing like crazy and eating everything in sight. Now I do take him outside two to three times a week, but it still brings up an interesting thought, does the bony plates in their skin make it so caiman lizards found a different way to acquire their D3?
Now I could test this, but I rather not. I switched the bulbs out, so he has the new bulb in there and I will see if there is any change in behavior. I want my first caiman lizard to grow up big and strong and even if UVB is not needed, when set-up right it does no harm either.
It was not until I got home that this had me thinking about Caiman Lizards and UVB. I know tegus its very important to have UV, with monitors it varies from species to species. One thought is that it depends on the skin, a dry leathery skinned animal may not UVB as much as a smooth thinner skinned reptile, take a savy monitor as the thick skinned and a tegu as the smooth skinned.
So where does this leave the newly popular, semi-aquatic, platy and smooth skin Caiman Lizard. Do they need UVB like their tegu cousins or is it not needed at all like their caiman namesake?
I was going to just going to reason this out in my head but looking over my logs I found something odd. A few weeks ago my female tegu had some tremoring in her front leg. Not too bad but I wanted to get out in front of this, she had a high calcium diet of whole animal and everything else was dusted like crazy. I keep records of what bulb is how old and when it was bough. My records said they bulb was only 3 months old, the one Bacardi has is 8 months and the year and a half year bulb was in the box ( I keep the old bulb around just for heat incase one of the newer bulbs burns out). Well I unscrew the bulb and it’s the 8 month bulb, so I buy a new one and sure enough both lizards perk up. I figured I had mixed up the lights when I moved them down to my moms so no big deal. I open the box to the old bulb and to my surprise it’s the newer bulb, it had only been used for less than a month! So the bulb I have had for over a year has been in Bacardi’s cage for about 3 to 4 months now and he is still growing like crazy and eating everything in sight. Now I do take him outside two to three times a week, but it still brings up an interesting thought, does the bony plates in their skin make it so caiman lizards found a different way to acquire their D3?
Now I could test this, but I rather not. I switched the bulbs out, so he has the new bulb in there and I will see if there is any change in behavior. I want my first caiman lizard to grow up big and strong and even if UVB is not needed, when set-up right it does no harm either.
, lol. I am so broke right now that adding a second one onto my credit card might not be noticed.
