Suggestion for new forum category.."dont do this!'

[paris]

i had a preventable death yesterday of one of my popei morphs, i had placed a wadded up paper towel in a morph set up, it was wet-very wet and i had moved it around 2 days ago to check on all the ones hiding in its crevices but i guess by doing that i also trapped one in and it suffocated over the past 2 days. over the past 8 years of keeping caudates and attempts as far back as the 80's at keeping anurans i have learned alot and desired to learn more-i even turned in my 401K to buy my first computer in 97' because all the books available on the market just plain sucked for amphib care. the data available on care has boomed in the past 5 years, and alot can be contributed to this site (even if people dont right out rip off the data sheets they at lest use them for reference). i am proposing to john to start a new column called 'dont do this', though many mistakes are detrimental they do have the purpose that we learn from them (unless youre really thick or stubborn). i cannot tell you haw many simple mistakes i have made over the years in keeping amphibians that have directly resulted in animal deaths(like dragon fly nymphs in an outdoor tank that ate all my tiger larvae). although many basic 'donts' are in the care sheet sections, the 'one off's and 'it seemed like a good idea at the time's and just plain poor planning and lack of insight arent -for obvious reasons- covered there. i would like a forum in here dedicated to educating others from personal mistakes-as im sure many of us may have done the same things with the same results and posting such for other to read may prevent another useless death. for those that may be squeamish about making public their errors there is always the option to post anonamously.

....and please feel free in my posts to correct my bad spelling guys, this system will tell me a word is spelled wrong but not the right way (but it will not correct me on english/canadian spelling of words like 'colour' and 'behaviour' but it thinks 'caudates' is a spelling error)

 

[chris]

I think this would be a good idea.
Chris

 

[angelina]

Great idea! Sometimes learning from others mistakes can be the best way to learn.

 

[jennifer]

In fact, we already have this:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/catastrophes.shtml

I will add your suffocation problem, Paris. Sorry to hear about it.

Any other contributions out there that anyone is humble enough to share? If you don't want to post your errors publicly, feel free to email them to me. The article doesn't name names!

 

[chris]

Jen
add the problem of cyclops eating larvae....I just lost 3 paramesotriton hongkongensis larvae to them. This species of cyclops mannaged to eat 3 larvae in 12 hrs without leaving a trace. They gang up on the larvae and eat its gills, killing it then eat the whole thing....
Chris