I know I know, I should've let it settle for a few weeks. But she's been cramped up in her temp tank for a month and I couldn't bear it anymore. She was ready, too, because she wasted no time hopping right in. I am positively delighted by all of this
Never owned a gecko or built an enclosure before, but it was love at first sight. Hardest part of all this is waiting before I can give her the keys to her new crib.
Side note, owning her keeps reminding me of this scene from The Wire where Dee thinks he's about to get smoked but Wee Bay is just showing him how to take care of his fish.
“You see, they ain’t no problems. Just beautiful as hell, Dee.”
Now all that's left to do is apply window tint to the outside and let it sit and mature before my girl moves in. The idea was to try emulating the New Caledonian maquis shrub land. I tinted excavator clay using iron oxide pigments for the background. I've never built a terrarium for anything before so I'm genuinely shocked at how well everything turned out.
Currently setting up my girl Abra's (picture included) permanent tank. While I wait for some supplies to come in the mail I decided to play around with some of the branches I bought to see how they fit. I really liked working with the cholla because I could break pieces off with a pair of pliers and get cleaner transitions than cutting it flat. I was super excited to find the biggest piece because it has a gnarly root ball that I think will look sick once integrated into the substrate.
My goal is to replicate the scrubby marquis of New Caledonia instead of just doing your standard tropical gecko enclosure (nothing wrong with those). I'm trying to simulate a thicket of shrubs with this layout and will be incorporating some air plants higher up to minic living foliage. Tell me if you see the vision.
The thing that bugs me the most about it is how I tend tend to slope down and to the right as I get further down the page.
I've had this ultrablotch for a couple of weeks. This is my first gecko, but I kept bearded dragons all growing up, so I'm not unfamiliar with reptile care. She's in a temporary enclosure while I build out her permanent setup. She is almost exactly a year old.
I also have a few questions about size and feeding:
Since I got her she only really seems to eat the Pangea I prepare when I feed it to her off of a tiny spoon. When I just leave the food in her feeding dish overnight it doesn't really seem like she touches it. Am I instilling bad habits by hand feeding her every night? I've been feeding her 50/50 watermelon and growth formula. She also gets a gut loaded cricket once a week in lieu of Pangea.
When I got her a couple weeks ago she weighed 14 grams, today she's at 16. That's about normal for a gecko her age, right?
I read that you can move to feeding them every other day at about a year. Do you think I should try that now, or wait until she's had time to settle into her permanent enclosure?
L to R
Sheaffer's Balance Statesman
Sheheaffer's Snorkel Statesman
Sheaffer's PFM III
Sheaffer's PFM V
Sheaffer's PFM III
Aurora Optima
Waterman's Hundred Year Pen
Parker Vacumatic Slender Maxima
Parker Vacumatic Senior Maxima
Parker Vacumatic Major
Parker 51 double jewel
Parker VP
From top to bottom:
L/E Pelikan 1935 "Originals of Their Time" (B nib). I believe this is the only broad nib pen I own, but I'm loving it. This one is slightly stubby. Line variation plus a fat line to hide my poor handwriting have made it fun pen to write with. Not to mention the gorgeous lapis lazuili celluloid it's made of.
Azure Pearl Parker Vacumatic Senior Maxima (F nib). A rarity I've hunted for since the beginning. I finally found this one mislabeled as a major on ebay and snapped it up.
Burgundy Pearl Parker Vacumatic Senior Maxima (XF nib). The way I came about this pen makes it one of my favorite. I was in a small town in Missouri for work. On my way home I stopped by a small antique store near Moberly. I found this pen along with another and bought them both for $150. The maxima's nib was bent, but I was able to bend back in place and it writes great. The pen is engraved with the name RUSSELL B. BOHON. I was able to look him up and found an obituary, and it urns out he was a dentist in the next town over. His birthday in combination with the production date stamped on the barrel (Q4 1938) lead me to believe he would've been 22 when he received it. I like to think it might have been a college graduation gift or Christmas present, but I don't think I'll ever know for certain.
Jet Black Parker Vacumatic Senior Maxima (Greg Minuskin F stub nib). This is the crown jewel of my collection imo. It's not the flashiest Vacumatic, but it's a downright perfect example and the pen I ink up most often.
Double Jeweled Parker 51 Vacumatic (F nib)
Sheaffer's PFM III (M nib) This guy is probably one of my favorite pens to hold and write with. The dimensions are perfect, the weight sublime, and the nib a dream to put to paper.
I realized this afternoon I hadn't written with any of my favorite pens for a while, let alone bought a new one. I took these out to mess around with and had to stop to admire them all in one place. Doing so got me thinking about my interest in the hobby and how my tastes have evolved over the years (I started collecting around 2020 or so). I started off indiscriminate in my purchases, just looking to get my hands on the next "new" vintage pen. This was fun for a while, but my budget caught up with me eventually and my acquisitions slowed down dramatically over the past couple of years. It's become more fun to think about how my next pen will fit into the overall theme of my collection. For me this has turned into something a showcase of vintage design excellence. All in all, I really appreciate how specific my collection has gotten. I've sold off many pens I didn't use often, and frankly I don't miss them. I guess if I had to come up with a point to this I'd say that it's much more rewarding to slow down and find a niche you particularly enjoy.
Thanks for looking.