Advice on pixie enclosure

[Willieboosie]

Thank you so much for your help. I’ve made the changes you suggested and things seem much better. My ambient humidity is slightly above 50% so with the screen on it is drying so much slower. He seems much more comfortable. And enjoying the extra water.

One last concern i just noticed if you don’t mind commenting... don’t want to junk up the forum. Is it normal to find cricket parts in the poops? Just noticed that this afternoon, they are solid but the water had some wings and other pieces of exoskeleton in it. Just worried about impaction. Thanks again for your help.

[Lija]

You should aim for 70-80% humidity and full spectrum light. Glad to hear its better now, they can sit in a water for days

yes, hard parts are normal, whatever was not digested will go out, but you need to monitor size of the crickets, they should be no more then the length between frog eyes. You should also introduce nightcrawlers as a main staple, dubia roaches are awesome too, not sure if in florida you can have then, no roaches for us in Canada you can give pinky once in a very while

[Willieboosie]

Ok thanks, I drilled holes in a mason jar so I can make it more like rain rather than mist now but filtered water. Seems to be staying around 70% thoughout the day. And thanks so much for that, big relief as it’s just been small parts. I’ve heard that tip about the crickets and I do my best to get crickets that size, sometimes they’re slightly bigger though.

Do I need to have full spectrum if his enclosure gets natural sunlight throughout the day though?

oh yea, and I do feed roaches as well. I am starting a discoid roach colony as Dubia are illegal here. Just not quite as much as I’m trying to keep my numbers up. I’ll start going to the store and getting ones to feed him more often for now.

[Lija]

You need dechlorinated tap (like for fish tanks, tap with water conditioner, my fav is prime), or spring water, filtered is not really good for them. In florida if he gets lots of natural light it should be fine. Normally when you think what an animal needs you look into their natural habitat and they live in africa in swamps, under blazing sun, but it does get cooler at night. I’m sure thats very similar to florida well, more or less.

[Willieboosie]

It is, very much so and high humidity the most of the time. I want to first say that I’m grateful again for your time. But one thing about the tap water is I may need to test it. I’m relatively sure that ours has fluoride and maybe other chemicals. I knew that distilled water was bad but not carbon filtered. Is it bad for the same reason (lack of minerals?) or something else? I’ll start spring water tomorrow for the time being or could I just boil my tap water to remove chlorine, perhaps other things?

[Lija]

You are welcome!
yes, distilled is stripped of all minerals, there is article somewhere about water comparison, dont remember where, its attached in one of subforums. Boiling dont really remove chlorine, they use it in more stable form now. Just get a water conditioner, its really cheap, and used for fish tank water. You need the same quality water as you would for fresh water fish tanks.

[Willieboosie]

I found the post you mentioned and just did my first batch of conditioned tap today. I’ve also kept it more moist than I was before and bought an extra water area to add in today! Unfortunately I fed him some calciworms the other day and was unaware that I needed to poke holes in them and he passed a few whole. . You’ve been invaluable though and I hope you have a good rest of your week.