A:  Well apparently Eastern newts are indigenous to Illinois.  He didn't come in when winter hit.  He probably invaded during the fall when they migrate searching for places to survive the winter.  However, how one got into your house is beyond my ken.  LA    

LA

A:  Sorry, I can't recommend any on-line turtle mongers.  We currently have one African side-neck turtle in stock.  You can read his profile on our  Sideneck  page.  LA

A:  It sounds like he doesn't want to eat your pellets.  Give him a different food from the list I suggested earlier.  Yes, fish can go two months without eating.  They usually wind up with hollow bellies and sunken eyes.  Very few fish will voluntarily quit eating -- jaguars are not on the picky eater list.  Quarantine him.  He could be full of internal parasites.  LA

LA
Inch-long "rainbow frog."  Really a dyed African clawed frog.  You never know till you order one.

A:  Finally, a question I can answer.  Some one out there decided to dye young albino African clawed frogs and put them on the market under a variety of imaginative salesy names.  They cost three or four times the price of plain vanilla clawed frogs.  They get fat because they eat lots -- and because they occasionally eat a bit of gravel.  You can learn more about them on our web page:  African Clawed Frogs   LA

A:  It's 32 F in Tennessee today.  We're somewhere below zero.  We wear shorts when it gets up to 32.  I'm considering shipping you a hermit crab, but why would you want a dead hermit crab?  LA

A:  Yes.  Make sure you have a male and a female.  Then add a cave at each end of the tank.  Feed lightly twice a day.  LA

A:  Another turtle.  LA

A:  Yes, some females will convert to male-ishness after a couple years as females.  However, it is more likely that your young swordtails were males all along and finally reached sexual maturity.  LA
PS  Most males stop or slow their growth once they sart growing their sword  The biggest males develop slowly.

A:  They should make very impressive males.  LA

A:  Sounds good to me.  I haven't seen bladderwort for years.  The ones we used to see were almost brown with lots and lots of bladders.  By the way, nice pics.  Can you show it eating baby guppies?  LA

A:  Sounds like.  LA

A:  No specific date exists.  It depends upon temperature.  They will not eat while they are wiggling larvae absorbing their yolk sacs.  Once they turn over and start swimming across the bottom, they are looking for food -- not a lot, just a little bit.  In a well aged grow-out tank with a bit of gravel sprinkled on the bottom, they usually find orts and ends of microscopic animacules that get them started in life.  Your breeding nets are too devoid of tasty paramecia and rotifers to kick start their careers.  They'll do much better in the plastic shoe boxes.  You don't need to worry about their temperature.  Put your new batch in a plastic shoe box with a bit of gravel and your success rate should go up dramatically -- especially if you stock it with a couple of well fed mystery snails at least one week in advance.  LA

LA

A:  Baby bearded dragons eat better in a group.  Yours is probably older than two months.  Anyway, start him out on a bit of baby food or apple sauce -- just a little.  Later you'll need a grater to cut his fruits and vegetables down to size.  I'd skip the pinkies for a while.  LA

A:  Winter is the time of year that salamanders spend many months underground.  They are more likely to emerge from their cave at night when their lights are off (and you're not watching).  LA

A:  Alright, good to know.  I'll add it to my jewel page.  Thanks.  LA

A:  Oscars can intimidate newcomers to their tank.  (I'm surprised your oscar hasn't eaten your tiger barbs.)  I would guestimate your dempsey will eventually feel at home.  You can accelerate the process by moving around all the decor in your tank (wood, rocks, plastic plants).  Then they all think they're starting from square one.  LA

A:  Western painteds usually run aroumd $30.  The supply seems to have "frozen up" lately.  LA

A (one day later):  You are so in luck.  Yesterday, someone traded in two breeding size western painted turtles -- one male and one female.  LA

A:  They are $30 each.  LA

3136005952, January 29, 2009
This is my beardie BOSS. Do you know what color morph he is? Or is he just a regular color?

31

A:  Looks like the regular to me.  LA

A1:  You need to take your water dragon to a reptile vet.
A2:  Your leopard gecko will eventually eat a varied diet.  If you add the calcium dust to your crickets' diet, they won't have that nasty taste.  His tail will not drop off if you pick him up by the body.  LA

A:  I'm not sure there is such a thing as a "perfect" turtle tank filter.  Perhaps a smaller version of the method Hercules used to clean the Augean stables (his 5th labor)?  We have a Marineland 350 on a 29 with usually a half-dozen turtles in it.  It keeps the water clear for a week or two, then I have to change the water and clean the stinky filter.  Nasty. LA 

A:  I started with a Pentax 500 SLR using Kodachrome and lots of different add-on lenses and a hand-held garage light with a color balanced incandescent light bulb.  Way too costly and awkward to work with, but I got better pictures.  Then I bought a used digital that I liked and started using the "shoot a bunch and delete 90%" method.  I can't remember the name but it was the first one I dropped.  Then I lost one.  Both of these were after I learned to work them by instinct.  The one I use now is a Nikon D50 SLR.  I'm toying with adding a hand-held slave light because all the pics come out different colors because of the different lights over different fish tanks.

LA
Nine pictures of the same 4-inch koi.

LA
#3 selected with the unnecessary parts cropped off.

I shot this mostly scaleless koi to add to Carpy Koi.  I probably should have shot another dozen or so.  Que sera.  LA
PS  The web site now contains 34,172 pics.

A:  Hamster teeth keep growing as long as they're alive.  You'll have to clip them again -- probably sooner rather than later.  I've never had a hamster that needed his teeth clipped, just a rabbit or two.  I used toenail clippers.  Clip him before his teeth get weird again.  LA