Terrarium life
Last night I heard one of the crickets in the terrarium start to chirp again. Since this is rather annoying for me (and might cause stress for Asterix), I decided to remove the bug at once. Unfortunately, the crickets were being rather elusive, so I ended up removing all the potted plants and most of the other things so that they wouldn't have any hiding places left. In the end, I found
3 living crickets (there were only supposed to be two)
1 dead cricket (so much for Asterix eating them)
1 meal worm (I gave him 3 many weeks ago. How do the worms survive without the meal?)
1 cocoon, probably meal worm (Eek!)
I removed the insects before finally going to bed. This morning I took some time to clean the whole terrarium, since the plants were already out. I checked the substrate package (Forest bark) to make sure the substrate in the terrarium was all organic and easily disposable, and noticed that it was made of fir bark. FIR bark. And I'm supposed to keep Asterix away from fir-trees...
I think I should have been more careful when I bought the substrate. I was a bit overwhelmed at the time, though, because I bought it together with the lizard and most of the other equipment, and everything was happening pretty fast. I asked the pet shop owner for Reptibark (A substrate good for lizards) but if I remember correctly, she didn't have any at the moment. Since I still needed something, she gave me that back of Forest bark substrate instead. This is the same person who sold me Asterix, so she knew what I was going to use the substrate for. Either she didn't notice the fir bark any more than I did, or this particular fir product is not harmful to Asterix, or she just didn't care.
Whatever the case is, I removed the bark and didn't add any more of it in the terrarium. I'm going to find some different bark tomorrow when the animal shops are open again. I doubt any of the salespeople are likely to know enough about crested geckos and Forest bark to give that product a green light, so I won't be using it again.
At least the terrarium plants are doing fine.
