BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Hi all its my first question since lurking in the background for a while. A little history first I've had my BTS for about 6-8 months or so now. He was about 22 inches long when I got him at the time he was living in a 18x18x24 exo tank (not nearly enough space for obvious reasons). He was quickly moved in to a 50 gallon (non breeder) tank. Personally I'd like to move him to a larger enclosure as with his hide and basking area its a little cramped. I was wondering in a captive environment is there such things as too large for a single reptile?

Now some more history behind this. I built a custom turtle enclosure a while back thats 6 feet long 3 feet wide with a 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank for the actual pond part. Here's a pic from before it was completely setup to give you an idea.


I no longer have my turtle and I changed it into a pond with same Jack Dempsey fish. I'm not enjoying the fish in there because I can't see them. What I'm thinking of doing is temporarily putting my skink Digger back in the 18x18 exo tank, putting water in the 50 gallon tank, draining the pond and transferring the fish to the glass tank. Putting a platform in the stock tank to remove the depth by at least half adding some easy way in and out of the stock tank. In the picture the basking area would be on the far right.

I have a few hurdles I need to get over before I could go forward this with the fish but strongly considering it. Thoughts?

Seems like it would be appropriate. So long as the skinks can easily climb the ramp(a tunnel style on may be more appropriate, such as large diameter corrugated pipe), and the temperatures in the cage are appropriate it seems like it will be a good place for a blue tongue skink-if but a bit of overkil!. I would make it so the bluetongue has no way to fall from the basking area into the rubbermaid.

Looks good to me!

It looks like a lot of work, but there is no reason it can't work if you are willing to do it.

You do need to be careful to not give a single skink more space than he would have in the wild though. My feeling is that as long as you keep the enclosure smaller than Australia, or the Indonesian island that he comes from, he should be able to handle the size.

Jeff wrote:It looks like a lot of work, but there is no reason it can't work if you are willing to do it.

You do need to be careful to not give a single skink more space than he would have in the wild though. My feeling is that as long as you keep the enclosure smaller than Australia, or the Indonesian island that he comes from, he should be able to handle the size.

here here!