this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
84 points (98.8% liked)

Asklemmy

43757 readers
1060 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I own red eared slider turtles, while not exactly exotic it's funny that the three things they are known for by owners are things normal folks would not expect.

  1. Turtles are escape artists. Because they need so much water to swim in and need basking areas, you'll generally want to fill your tank up as high as you can, and then have a basking platform up there. They will use those and filters to try to escape. They may succeed. There are a ton of questions/guides online to address this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHbV5nsDCb8&ab_channel=TheTurtleGirl
  2. They are destructive. You will want to have a filter for them, and they will attack the filter with the fury of a bored creature attacking the thing making a noise. Many filters will fall to their wrath. If you google it you'll find ton of stories of turtles destroying filters/water heaters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnD3cKuFOa0&ab_channel=HMoore
  3. They smell. How can such a small creature smell so powerfully? Magic.

Any other pet owners have secrets about their type of pet?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not sure if leopard geckos really count as exotic, given they're about as close to domesticated as lizards get currently, but they're more exotic than cats and dogs. In any case, I with people in general would understand that pet stores, especially large chain ones, but the smaller ones are often included too, cannot be trusted to give accurate advice on how to set up and care for an animal, and as such, asking the employee for what to get to go with the animal while buying it does not constitute adequate research into that animal's care.

I've seen way too many posts on the leopard gecko subreddit, before I left reddit, from people with wildly insufficient or actively harmful setups, based on advice from a pet shop, or "starter kits" marketed as being for the species. Many were well meaning people who simply assumed that the pet store employees were professional and therefore must know what they were talking about, and while most ultimately seemed to listen when everyone warned them that they were doing something wrong, some stubbornly would insist on trusting what they had been told to buy.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

As a veterinary student, I'd say you really can't trust anything from pet store employees regardless of species. As part of our nutrition rotation we go to pet stores and pretend to be new first time dog owners and ask for recommendations on food. The "advice" I've heard has been horrifying at times.