Hedgehog as pets?

[Guest]

Just curious Gleb, did you ever get one?

[Gleb]

unfortunatly, as of now, not yet. With boarding season finally coming up and realizing how much work it is to clean the cage every two days, I figured its best to save my money for gas than to get one for now. I defintly want one in the future. It would be unfair to the hedgehog to get it and not spend the time it deserves with it.

The breeder I know charges $150-200 for one. Her hegdehogs just had a litter but I passed for now. Thats a few weeks worth of gas and more than half a season pass. Looks more likely for the summer time.

are you looking to get one Jim?

[chadx]

About 6 years ago, I was soooo close to getting into the poison-dart frogs. The thing that had me hesitate were the breeding of the required food like fruit flies and/or a variety of other live beasties. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they require live food, correct? Or has someone come up with something dead/processed that they will eat without having to tie it to a thread or feed them with something that makes it look alive.

At the time, I already had a fishroom in my basement, so the frog tank would have been in that room (the room was heated rather than each aquiarium). I had about 40 aquariums (and that is not counting anything 20 gallons or less that I used to raise fry. That is only counting 40 gallons or larger). It worked pretty good. Did bulk water changes with 50 gallon drums. Used one blower to run air-driven sponge filters in all the tank and still had left over air. Heated the room rather than individual tank. I raised mainly Lake Tanganyikan cichlids and catfish. Lake T. is an African Rift Valley lake about 350 miles long and 40-80 miles wide.

I haven't had any tanks for 5 years now. I've moved twice in that time, so have yet to set anything back up.

Jim, What are the prices on those little froggies doing now days. I had my heart set on a specific color of Tincs, but again, I never took the final step.

[willywhit]

Jim,

Do you have any of those frogs that you can lick and trip out on the excreted toxins ?

If Gleb ever did get a Hedgehog, I'd name it "Hyatt" since Ron's real last name is the same as the hotel chain and it sounds cool..."Hyatt the Hedgehedge".

Gilmour knew RJ's real last name when we met him, years ago.John had these reaaly cool exotic turtles for years too. Just don't let your dog get ahold of one.

[bobdea]

bufo alvaris

they produce 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin

milk their warts, smoke and hold on

[Gleb]

Chadx, thats crazy. How do you clean those tanks and how long did it take?

Jim, thats pretty impressive, how many do you have?

Willy, i think if i do get one, it will named with the original idea, Ron Jeremy. Everyone will know who that refers to because RJ is the ultimate pimp.

[Gleb]

Best of luck! Keep us updated.

[chadx]

Jim, No doubt there would be a good market for custom structures since there is more flexibility for automation with custom terraria and aquaria and that would be a big draw for people in the 'rich' income bracket that love looking at them but don't know and perhaps don't want to know, the inner workings of a semi-closed invironment. I say semi-enclosed because neither are a true closed environment what with all our feeding, waterchanges, misting, etc. depending on which type of structure we are talking about.

Gleb,

It would take me about 8 hours to do water changes on all of the tanks. When I was trying to have species spawn or had fry (both of which were most of the time), I did the water changes weekly. 8 hours sounds like a lot, but most of that is spent waiting for pumps to move water from one place to another.

I'd basically fill a 50 gallon barrel with water of the correct temperature, add dechlorinator, buffers, etc. that I wanted and then circulated it while I syphoned out the tanks. The syphoning was made easy by using a regular aquarium syphon, which lets you get down in the gravel, to get out all the dietrus, without actually sucking out the gravel. I attached the end of the syphon to a long hose that fed directly into a floor drain in the basement. No carrying buckets for me. Also, the hose was long enough that it never lost syphon from tank to tank. Once I had 50 gallons worth out of a variety of tanks, I stopped the syphon, kicked on a pump in the 50 gallon barrel, and refilled the tanks.

I know people that went a step further and had all of their tanks interconnected. Water would be filtered, for all aquaria, in one huge filter. All the tanks were drilled with overflow pipes that returned water to the main filter. The main filter did it's thing and constantly pumped water back to all the aquaria. They could adjust the amount of flow into each tank. Each tank would not overflow, of course, because the water level remained the same with the extra running out the overflow tube and the process started over. To do water changes, they would pull water our of the pump housing, which usually held 30 - 60 gallons and then introduced fresh (treated) water to that.

I never liked that setup for two reasons. The first was drilling tanks for the plumping was hard to do without cracking them. Buying tanks pre-drilled (like for salt water or reef tanks) made them too expensive. The second reason was I didn't like all of the tanks to share water for disease reasons. Once I learned more on fish husbandry, none of my fish ever had any diseases, but buying and selling a lot introduced fish of unknown original and I never wanted to risk introducing new pathogens. (One way around this is to have several quarantine tanks that are not attached to the main system).

I never named any of my fish Ron Jeremy. (had to tie back to the main subject somehow).

By the way, per my previous post about my having had a African pigmy hedgehog 10 or 12 years ago and giving it to my friend's son who took it to school to introduce the little guy to a cute chicky hedgehog that the school had...I never did hear if the two of them had any little Ron Jeremys as a result. One can only hope. I imagine they have to be pretty careful when they are getting it on with all those quills involved.

[chadx]

Yep, it was a pretty good setup. I haven't had that since I lived in St. Louis (over 4 years ago). Since then, we lived in Chicago (downtown) for three years and now finally got out to Montana (three years ahead of our long term plan I might add! Whoo-hoo!) I never had a tank in Chicago and don't have one here, but thinking about putting up a little 29 gallon with some shell dwellers or Julies.

I had some Julidochromis transcriptus (my favorite species in that genus) in a 29 gallon. Julies usually choose one of two spawning patterns. Small batches of eggs about once a month or larger spawns every few months. Mine spawned in small batches. The small fry would be seen at the mouth of the cave. I knew a new batch of eggs were there when those fry migrated to the outside of the cave. Then the new fry would appear at the mouth of the cave. When the next batch of eggs came, those fry went to the outside of the cave, and the batch that was outside the cave dispersed throughout the tank. They kept going like that for a long time. Interesting cycles.

My St. Louis water was rock hard (over 300ppm) so it was ideal. Totally buffered against pH crash, too, no matter how long you went without changing water. My dad, in Minnesota, got into it after he saw my setup. He was on acidic super soft well water so he did south american species. I got my south american fix from that because I didn't want to mess with RO water, etc. He spawned discus for a while, but got tired of the water changes after a couple year. Now they moved to a different house with no basement so he doesn't have any tanks (much to his relief I think! hehe)