Tricia's Chinese Water Dragon, Reptile and amphibian care page

WELCOME TO THE TURTLE-l DISCUSSION LIST

The keeping of, and caring for a large variety of turtles and tortoises has become increasingly popular in the last several years. As interest grows in the herp field, and with hobbyists, we will likely see an increase in availability of these turtles and tortoises in pet stores, specialized reptile shops, and with any luck - from captive breeders. I'm very pleased to welcome you to the turtle-l mailing list where you will be able to learn more about the care, diet, and the captive environment required by the species of turtle or tortoise for which you have chosen to care. On this list you will meet many helpful people, Share experiences, learn new husbandry methods, and hopefully have an enjoyable time.

Index

WELCOME
Our Aims Are:
Posting in HTML or Rich text format, and graphics:
Full mailboxes!
Topic Headers
Posting about a Sick Turtle or Tortoise:
SUBSCRIBING
DIGEST-FORMAT
HOW TO POST TO THIS LIST
The first message that you post
Off Topic Posting
Important Majordomo Commands
UNSUBSCRIBING
ARCHIVES
HELP
Turtle and Tortoise Links
Turtle and Tortoise Books
How to contact me

1. WELCOME to turtle-l! Please print this letter and keep it on hand for future reference. I suggest that you book mark this site now. :)

2. Our Aims Are: discussion on captive husbandry, breeding, solving medical problems, and rescue of animals in distress. If you need to learn about any aspect of tortoise/turtle care there is a MAGIC formula to use:-)

`·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·.

"ASK A QUESTION!"

`·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·. .· `·.

There is no such thing as a silly question, if anything is worrying you - ask about it. If anyone does laugh at you, ask them if they were always so clever:)

3. Never use the word "help" in the subject - this causes problems with majordomo. If for some reason you must use the word help in a subject line please put an * in the word like this h*elp.

4. It is preferable that pictures NOT be sent to the list.

This list comes in list format, as in members receiving each letter as it is sent, and digest format, as in several letters all bundled up into one large email a few times a day. Sending pictures into the list causes problems with the digest version of the list. Instead of seeing a picture the digest members only get lines and lines of unreadable code that makes up the picture. This does not make the digest any easier to read!
Please, if you have a picture that you would like to share with other list members either put the picture up on a web page and tell the list members where they may go to view the picture, or post to the list saying that you have a picture that you would like the list members to see and then you can email the picture to all interested parties PRIVATELY. Thank you!
One of our list members has kindly offered his web page for picture posting, please contact:
- Stan in NJ
- mailto:szelek@thecore.com
- ICQ#6146033
- http://www.thecore.com/~szelek
- It's turtles all the way down.

Posting in HTML or Rich text format, and graphics:

5. Many email software packages can now give people the ability to send letters using several different HTML formats such as different fonts, italics, colour backgrounds, fancy lines and bullets, inline pictures, and many of these programs can also send automatic attachments such as v-cards, or winmail.dat attachments. Please do not use any of these fancy new abilities or attachments! You can visit- Posting in Plain text- how to turn off HTML to learn how you can turn off the HTML in your email program so that you will be able to post to the turtle-l mailing list!

All posts to turtle-l or turtle-l-digest must be in plain text with no attachments of any kind such as v-cards, or winmail.dat attachments.
- A) You must remember that some of our members are using Unix servers and email programs that only accept text posts (and they cant do a thing to change this fact);
- B) Several of our members are from Europe or other countries that charge very high telephone and internet connection rates so the longer it takes them to download their mail the more they end up paying. HTML attachments, v-cards, winmail.dat and pictures only fatten the post and cause more download time for these people.;
- C) The list members who receive the digest version are also affected by all of the html add ons, v-cards, winmail.dats and as I said above any pictures that are sent to the list. As an example, when someone uses HTML in their post with a colour background and perhaps say a couple of different fonts ... ALL of the posts after this one persons post on the digest run together like one HUGE paragraph, and usually in a different font than the rest of the digest is printed in. This makes the digest very hard to read. Winmail.dat attachments cause some of the digest members to not be able to open their version of the digest at all. Therefore they may lose a lot of valuable information from that one digest just because of someone's attachment.

Full mailboxes!

6. ** Check your mail on a regular basis- PLEASE! Not to pick ... but AOL members especially, must have very small mailboxes and if you don't check your mail everyday or two your mailbox can fill up quickly. I also believe that when some people check their mail they leave copies of their mail on the server. Unfortunately even though you are checking your mail, if the mail is still being left on the server you could end up with a full mailbox problem easily enough. The result of a full mailbox is:

A) You don't get anymore turtle-l email or any other mail for that matter until you empty your mailbox,
B) The list owner gets an error message for every letter sent to the list that cant get to you because your mailbox is FULL!
C) If I as the listowner, get error messages for more than a week I become quite frustrated as I have no way of contacting you because your mailbox is full ... so all I can do to lessen the amount of error messages that I receive on a daily basis is to delete the person who hasn't checked their mail for a week or so. Sorry. (considering that this list can get 100 or more emails a day ... waiting a week, with one error message for each letter that doesn't get to a full mailbox results in an awful lot of error messages for me. Waiting a week is quite patient of me if I say so myself, please don't do this to me!)

7.Topic Headers Please precede your message with one of the following to indicate the content of your mail. Please use brackets and lower-case letters. Several list members are very busy people who filter their mail to get only important material:

[t] Turtles/tortoises (box turtles and terrestrial tortoises)
[a] Aquatics
[h] Husbandry
[b] Breeding
[c] Conservation
[v] Veterinary questions
[m] Miscellaneous chelonian information
[n] News - tortoise/turtle related

If your query covers two or more subjects, enter as [v][h][a] and not as [v,h,a] for those who use email filters.

List members should try to stay on topic when posting to the list. If, by chance, someone sends an off topic post to the list for whatever reason (ie non turtle or tortoise/ sick herp perhaps?), replies to that post should be sent privately to the original poster and not to the list. Thank you! It is always better to take unrelated matters to private mail and thus avoid cluttering up the list mail with too much "off topic" chatter.

A former list member created a mailing list just for off topic list chatter. This list is called Turtlechat. If you love the internet and want to chat with your new turtle-l list friends please visit http://www.onelist.com go to the FIND LIST link, then select ANIMALS, then select TURTLES, scroll down the list of turtle related mailing lists at onelist and you will find turtlechat.

When replying, a SMALL "quote" of the original letter lets people know what you are replying to - do not repost the entire letter if your answer is reliant only to one or two lines of the original post. Remember some of our members are paying for every minute that they are online so quoting several paragraphs of a letter simply to say "yes I agree" will be frowned upon.

8.Posting about a Sick Turtle or Tortoise: If your question relates to a sick tortoise/turtle in your care, please supply as much of the following information as you can:

Species - use the Latin or scientific name if you know it as well as common name
Age
Weight
How long in your care - and total time in captivity if possible
Where obtained and whether WC (wild caught) or CB (captive bred)
Whether housed with other tortoises of different species
Describe housing - indoor tortoises, describe vivaria i.e. enclosure size, lamps, heat, (types of) temperature, substrate, humidity, etc....
Do you have access to a good reptile vet - if not where do you live?
Vet consulted yes/no
If yes, vet diagnosis
What drugs are you currently giving the animal
Past drugs used
Has a fecal been done to test for parasites yes/no
Is the tortoise/turtle eating - is yes, what?
Is the tortoise/turtle drinking?
Is the tortoise/turtle dehydrated? (Sunken eyes, loose skin)
Is the tortoise/turtle defecating and urinating?
- if anything here seems abnormal please describe.

9. ENJOY the list! Provide input, ask questions, share information. The more the word is spread the better the lives of captive chelonia will be!

SUBSCRIBING:

To subscribe to turtle-l, send the following in the body (not the subject line) of an email message to:

If you wish to subscribe another address instead (such as a local redistribution list), you can use a command of the form:

subscribe turtle-l other-address@your_site.your_net

NOTE!!!!! The lists name is turtle-l as in Turtle-list ... that is not a number one, its a small letter L .... please be careful and make sure you use a small L when attempting to subscribe to the mailing list. Thanks!

DIGEST-FORMAT:

You may subscribe to the turtle-l-digest if you would rather receive the days posts in one email, rather than in single posts as they are sent to the list. If you are just subscribing, and would like the digest format:

Send a message to:
and in the body of the message type:
subscribe turtle-l-digest
end

If you are already on the list and want to receive it in digest format instead of single posting format you will have to do it in two combined steps:

Send a message to:
in the body of the message type:
unsubscribe turtle-l
subscribe turtle-l-digest
end

HOW TO POST TO THIS LIST:

Once you have subscribed to the list you can post by sending a message to:

You cannot post to the list unless you subscribe, your post will just bounce to the listowner if you are not a list member.

The first message that you post:

It would be very helpful if the first post that you make to the list contains the following information:

Mentions that you are new to the list.
Tells all of us a little bit about yourself such as where you are from (State, Province or Country will do.)
Tells all of us a little bit about your turtle(s) or tortoise(s):
- Name(s),
- Size,
- How you are housing your animals ...

Note: As a member of the turtle-l mailing list you will be able to learn more about the care, diet, and the captive environment required by the species or turtle or tortoise for which you have chosen to care. On this list you will meet many helpful people, Share experiences, learn new husbandry methods, and hopefully have an enjoyable time. If you have knowledge of, or a fair amount of experience with a specific species please feel free to share your knowledge and help others on the list. This list has members from around the world, with varying backgrounds, interests, and age groups. These people are friendly, helpful, and willing to share information with each other.

The occasional argument or disagreement may arise here and there. While differences in opinion are welcome, and often offer a chance to learn a different method of care, the majority of the list is not interested in off-topic arguments. If you disagree with someone's point of view and feel the issue cannot be resolved on the list in a peaceful civilized manner I would prefer that the disagreement be taken to private email.

If you are asked by the LISTOWNER (that's me Tricia) to take the discussion/argument off the list and into private email, because it is becoming disruptive to the list, or because only a few people are participating, please do so.

The majority of subscribers to the list are adults but occasionally we do have younger subscribers. I would like to state now that all postings to the list should not contain foul language. :)

Comments on list that contain racial remarks, personal attacks toward another list member, foul language, nasty arguments or flames will not be tolerated!

The posting of data such as faxes, IRC conversations, email from another mailing list or newsgroup, or private email posted to the list without the authors express permission included on such postings will not be tolerated. Privacy, data communication, and copyright laws may be broken when such postings are made to the list, and it is the list owners wish that these laws not be broken! Any private email posted to the list by a member, for a non member, that is inflammatory in nature will result in an immediate ban!

Subscribers that abuse the turtle-l list policy of no foul language, no racial remarks, no personal attacks, no posting of private or copywritten data, and or involve themselves in nasty arguments or flames on the list will politely be asked to take their discussion to private email by the list owner. If the person continues to be disruptive to the list after being warned to take it to private email they will then be BANNED from the list by the list owner.

The list has gone through some rough times in the past and the list owner is trying to make sure that ever member knows the list policy. I want each new member to be very clear on what is not allowed on this list. Turtle-l is a wonderful list, whose members share a wealth of information, you will not be sorry you joined this list!

The rules are not hard to follow! Share information, don't say anything to others that you would not like said to you, and you should be just fine! :)

OFF TOPIC POSTING:

The turtle mailing list has an extremely high volume of daily mail. This can be disconcerting for people looking for specific information about one particular species, or for those who are subscribed to the list from their office accounts. The high volume of mail may get them noticed! I would prefer that people try to post on topic and not post off topic things directly to the list. I realize a certain amount of chatter makes the list a friendlier place to be ... but 10 follow up posts stating "do what so and so said to do" is unnecessary. Please post directly to the person(s) you wish to discuss off topic subjects with if at all possible unless it contains relevant information that a majority of subscribers on the list can use as well.

Many of our subscribers use Chat programs such as ICQ (I personally use Pow Wow because it has voice chat) to discuss their turtles and tortoises and to just plain socialize. I suggest new subscribers enquire about these programs if they would like to get to know others on the list a little bit better or have real time conversations with others. This may help cut down on off topic list chatter if more people were to use these programs. :)

Don't forget about the turtlechat mailing list at http://www.onelist.com as well!

Important Majordomo Commands:

All routine administrative requests (including subscriptions and unsubscriptions) concerning this mailing list are handled by an automated server. Please read this message carefully to find the information relevant to you.

UNSUBSCRIBING

* Please Note- remember the unsubscribe command. The list can be very busy and although I can subscribe and unsubscribe people I simply do not have the time to do so. If you are having trouble unsubscribing from the list you are welcome to write to me, but otherwise please remove yourself from the list on your own if you ever do want to get off this list (but why would you want to? :) ).

*To unsubscribe from turtle-l:

send the following in the body (not the subject line) of an email message to:
unsubscribe turtle-l
or
unsubscribe turtle-l-digest
This will unsubscribe the account from which you send the message.

If you are subscribed with some other address, you'll have to send a command of the following form instead:

unsubscribe turtle-l other-address@your_site.your_net
or
unsubscribe turtle-l-digest other-address@your_site.your_net

If you don't know what address you are subscribed with, you can send the following command to see who else is on the list (assuming that information isn't designated "private" by the owner of the list):

who turtle-l

If you want to search non-private lists at this server, you can do that by sending majordomo a command like:

which string

This will return a list of all entries on all lists that contain "string".

ARCHIVES:

The turtle-l-digest, and the turtle-l list are now archived. When a list is archived it basically stores all the posts on the server and they can be accessed by sending a command to majordomo.

To see what is in the archives:

you can send a message to:
and in the message body you can write:
Index turtle-l (or Index turtle-l-digest)
end

The above message got me the following reply:

EXAMPLE:

>>>> Index turtle-l total 4 -rw-rw---- 1 majordom daemon 3241 Jul 27 22:17 turtle-l.9707 >>>>

Now, if I wanted to see what that one file was, I would:

send a message back to:
with the following commands in the body of the letter:
get (list) (file.name)
- Example:
- Get turtle-l turtle-l.9707
- end

and then I got back an email message with a few of today's posts in it. :)

HELP

To find out more about the automated server and the commands it understands, send the following command to majordomo

help

If you feel you need to reach a human, send email to: turtle-l-approval

Turtle and Tortoise Links

Turtle and Tortoise Books

Reptile & Amphibian Parasites by Eric M. Rundquist