r/Tegu

Hey all! My boyfriend and I recently bought a tegu through a reptile rescue in our area. Adult red female no known health issues, not the most friendly, just came in from someone who could no longer give suitable care. We get her hopefully within the next month- we have enclosure figured out but what are some things you wish you knew and could help first time owners, favorite resources etc. We have owned just about every reptile under the sun excluding anything XL! ( ball python, almost every type of gecko, beardies, uromastyx, whites tree frogs) but just bought a house and have the space for something big! Pic of the girl for tax, name needed!

Time to make him diet

Well I got some nice pictures not on a Tuesday but I thought I’d share
It’s still a T day so ToT lol
😂

When do they wake up? Do they come out of the enclosure everyday? I'm interested in what a day in the life of you and your Tegu looks like. Here is Toto looking cute.

Any recommendations for a fan or small ac unit that isn't a window unit? My tegu's tank is in my bedroom bc I still live at home with my parents, so naturally my room is pretty hot. Any suggestions would be super helpful, I am melting as summer approaches 🥵

Tegu happy, me, not so much!

For context I also have a bearded dragon tank in my room so 2 heat lamps in total makes it so hot in my room.

Photo of toothless because why not 💕

feeling proud of all the time put into taming and socializing this little guy.

he definitely has his days and there were some accidents along the way but hes proven to be a very good boy

Shortage of sausages! No amount of tongue flicks seem to help.

Getting the hard to reach places

this is Todd, my three year old argentine tegu. i’ve had him since he was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, but he had some weird issues when he was little including being almost entirely unable to shed despite a near constant 80-90% humidity in his enclosure and refusing to eat literally anything aside from smelt and pinky mice for a solid two months or so. i had a wonderful exotics vet that dewormed him and had me lather the poor guy in petroleum jelly and set him in a tub under a warm washcloth for 10 mins a day until the skin problem passed (which it did after about two weeks of this). that was three years ago and he’s not had any issues like this since aside from sometimes having trouble shedding the skin on his tail, but he’s just so small compared to other tegus his age.

when he was having all of those issues the vet suggested the possibility that he has crappy genetics which id imagine is likely as he initially came from petco (i worked there at the time, didn’t trust my customers, and had wanted a tegu my entire life. at the time definitely figured it was a win win and i dont regret it as i adore him greatly). but is this something that can be explained by bad genetics? or is something more wrong? i’ve kept a large variety of reptiles with more complex care requirements and this guy has absolutely stumped me.

he lives in an 8x4 grow tent, has a t5 uvb and two basking bulbs above his basking rock, digs tunnels in the substrate and goes about his lizard business. he eats homemade ground beef or turkey/egg/greens/sometimes blueberry mixtures as well as frozen/thawed small rats on occasion, every so often i buy reptilinks for him. i put calcium with d3 on his food, and i feed him twice a week with the occasional raw egg or fuzzy rat as a treat. he’s never brumated.

am i doing something wrong? he’s a pretty active guy, eats well, is friendly and likes to hang out on the enclosed deck with me on warm enough days (though i live in the north so those days can be pretty few and far between). i don’t want his health to suffer because im doing something wrong, but im not sure what else i should be doing.

for reference, the dog bed he’s sitting on in the pictures is 22” by 28”. any advice is appreciated!

About a week ago I noticed that my 10 month old tegu, Thorne, was walking strangely. As the video shows, he will sometimes take a normal step with his right leg; but more often his foot buckles toward the inside edge or he walks on the back of his hand/knuckle/wrist.

Don’t say “Vet Immediately” because we went 2 days ago!

The X-rays showed nothing wrong. The vet palpated his arm and hand and couldn’t feel anything, and the anti-inflammatory pain meds are doing absolutely nothing.

I can’t stand watching my boy limp around like this. It’s clear from how little help exotic vet I went to was that I will need to be referred to someone better, but what should I tell the next vet to get to the bottom of what’s happening? Is there anything else I can be doing to help him??

I have an almost 2 year old male tegu whos living in an 8x4x4 in the moment, I would love to upgrade him once I move out of an apartment and into a house with more space, but it’ll have to do for now. His enclosure at the moment is seriously lacking and I need some tips on what I can put in there. I’ve tried real and fake plants, but both usually end up getting buried. I didnt want to spend $200+ on fake branches large enough for him to climb so I got him some from the wilderness and sanitized them, but I had done something wrong and we ended up with carpenter ants. I will randomly put non reptile items in there like yoga mats, a T-shirt, a ball, but he doesn’t really care about those as much. So the only thing in his enclosure are 2 hides and a water bowl... He does come out and run around pretty much whenever he lets us know he wants to, but sometimes we’re really busy and multiple days go by where we aren’t home to let him roam around. I wanted to see everyones enclosures (preferably in 8x4x4) and find out what you guys have done so hopefully itll spark inspiration for my own enclosure :)

Delayed start putting this guy back outside, was paired up with one of my females indoors.

pics of miss Noona! Dear God. My dream has been a large lizard for my entire life. I'm 26, and I picked this cutie up around a month ago. I'm unsure on the age, but she shows visible growth weekly. Voracious little thing. I feed with tongs for the most part. Reptilinks, roaches, whatever I have for little treats from my own grocery shopping. I've brought her out of the cage once. It was early morning before her lights went on, and I just scooped her. I wooed her with a heating pad. She was whipping and jumping to get back in her home after ~45 minutes. The thing is- how the hell do you all do this? I'm slightly terrified having her out of the cage because she's so fast. There's a billion and one places for her to get lost. I'm nervous to transport her to another room upstairs that's tegu proof. Should I get a baby play pen to sit with her in? At the least, every morning I have my hands in her enclosure and she'll lick around. She hasn't crawled out on her own yet, or even walked across me. Is it okay that this is moving slowly? Any advice is so super appreciated. I love this journey we're on, but I get a bit overwhelmed at times.

Looking for confirmation on sex. This is my first tegu! I’m thinking female.