will a sikorae drink standing water ?

[geck123]

i have a small bowl she can drink from in her cage,but she can't soak in it.the humidity doesn't drop below 75%,and i see her drink when i spray at night.i'm concerned she may not drink if she isn't sprayed.i'm starting to see outlines of her ribs,so i trimmed back her plant to expose much more ground.i want to go out of town this evening,but i feel she is at a point that she needs close observation.i think she will pick up her eating on her own now that more hunting space is exposed,so it won't matter in that respect wether i'm here or not,but i don't want to have her go without drinking.i feel that if she's thirsty she will drink from standing water,but would feel better with some confirmation from other sikorae keepers.

[Andrew Gilpin]

In 5 years of keeping ours, I never saw them drink from a water bowl.... I could also never get our lineatus or our sikorae to cup feed either ( phants cup feed very well). I only saw our sikorae drink when they were sprayed. I'd just spray her good before you leave. She'll be fine for a day without water.
I also tried to shower our Uroplatus once every week or two to allow them to fully rehydrate. Simulating a good rain for 30-40 minutes isn't something you can exactly recreate in a cage too easily ( at least not a gecko cage), and seemed to be quite beneficial for the species that we kept.

[Salzy]

I'v never seen ours drink from a bowl either, but that doesn't keep me from leaving it in there since they could easily be using it without me seeing it happening. Ours eat from dishes, and come to the ground to do so, so I'd imagine that if they were thirsty enough that they would drink from the bowl as well.

Andrew...when you showered yours, how did you make sure the temperature of the water was correct? Did you just hold a thermometer under the spray for a bit?

[Andrew Gilpin]

Originally Posted by Salzy

Andrew...when you showered yours, how did you make sure the temperature of the water was correct? Did you just hold a thermometer under the spray for a bit?

I would leave the water run for a couple of minutes to make sure it wasn't going to jump around at all. I would have the water at skin temp coming out of the facet, and when it came out of the shower head ( since it was set to mist) it would feel slightly cool.
If you do this, be sure to have decently sized holes in the bottom of the container they're in ( so poo or fake leaves don't clog the holes). Also, elevate the container off of the shower floor so the water can't back up into the bin. I used a milk crate flipped over to set the bin on. I'd put a few 1/2 holes in the bottom of the container.
I wasn't worried about the warm water running out.... I had this happen a couple of times during the 30-40 minute showers, but the water coming out of the shower head is still likely 60-70 degrees or so, and just feels cold to us.
Showering them is usually a very good way to get them to fully fire up as well, something that is difficult to achieve with some Uroplatus.

[syntheticreality]

Andrew...

That's very interesting that you did that. Did you do this during the day or night? You never felt that it was stressing them? What if I were to put my sikoraes in a screen reptarium and run the shower over that, do you think that would work as well?

[Andrew Gilpin]

I, and many others have done this with Uroplatus. I wasn't the one who came up with it, it was a practice taken over from chameleon keepers from what I'm told.
A reptarium should work quite well actually. With fresh imports, I would try to shower the geckos once every 2-3 days for a couple of weeks or so to help rehydrate them. Just make sure your water temperatures aren't too warm ( literally skin temp coming out of the faucet, a bit cool when it's spraying out). I got like a 15-20 dollar adjustable shower head that had a fine mist setting. The screen top I was using on the bin worked well also to help break up the water droplets.
I feel the benefits of fully rehydrating the geckos outweighs any negative stressful affects that showering them might impose.

When I was at the Omaha zoo awhile back I got a behind the scenes tour. The amount of water sprayed on their Uroplatus was amazing. It was basically in an old stair well that had a drain in the far corner. We literally walked through several inches of water to look through the cages. It was like a rain chamber that would spray for an hour or two on a near daily basis depending on what season they were recreating. This way they're able to create a rain cycle, yet have the cages drain and have decent air flow too.

[syntheticreality]

Do you practice this with phants as well?

[Andrew Gilpin]

Originally Posted by syntheticreality

Do you practice this with phants as well?

with WC fresh imports, absolutely. I haven't had the need to shower our LTC or CB phants though. It is quite helpful with anything that seems to be sick or not doing well, rehydrating them completely is the first step to getting them to recover in my opinion.

[syntheticreality]

i still seem to have trouble keeping very high humidity without mold. I run the auto mist cycle on my phants about 3 times a day... once for a minute, once for 30 seconds, and once for 15 seconds. The longer two are at night.

Do you do the showering during the day or at night?

[Andrew Gilpin]

Originally Posted by syntheticreality

i still seem to have trouble keeping very high humidity without mold. I run the auto mist cycle on my phants about 3 times a day... once for a minute, once for 30 seconds, and once for 15 seconds. The longer two are at night.

Do you do the showering during the day or at night?

well this would be another advantage to showering them then.... the humidity in our basement during the winter is 15-30 percent in the room, and our phants get sprayed twice a day and haven't been showered in probably a year....
If you feel the humidity isn't high enough, and you can't keep spraying them because the cage is molding, try spraying once a day, and showering them every few days.
I use to shower them whenever was most convenient for me, but showering them after 7 or 8 PM would likely be the most ideal time to do it.