On FIRE!

[Herpquest]

If it is the Riopa Ferdinandi that you are interested in, we kept and bred them in the 90's and found them very easy lizards to both keep and breed.
Here is a general guide of how to keep them:


Feeeding.
Fire Skinks are carnivorous, eating a variety of insects. Offer them crickets, mealworms, butterworms, silkworms, locusts and any other insect of similar size. Make sure the insects are gut loaded with nutritional food, and dusted with a calcium or multi-vitamin supplement. Always provide your Fire Skink with a medium-depth dish of water for bathing and drinking, changed and cleaned daily. Small mouse pinkies are relished by Fire Skinks and can be given once or twice weekly.

Lighting, Temperature & Humidity
Provide your Fire Skinks with a heat gradient ranging from 76 degrees F to 85 degrees F, with a basking spot reaching 90 degrees F. Keep the daytime lights on a 12 hour cycle. At night, drop the temperature to between 70 degrees F to 75 degrees F. Use full spectrum flourescent lighting as well, providing your Skinks with the needed UVB rays. Use incandescent lighting or a ceramic heat emitter to provide the heat.
To keep the humidity high, give the interior of the vivarium/tank a fine misting with luke warm water daily. Take care to avoid spraying the heater/heat bulb directly.

Housing
Fire Skinks like to hide, so you will need to provide them with plenty of places to do so. A single Fire Skink can live comfortably in a 3' x 1.5' x 1.5' enclosure. Make sure to provide them with lots of branches and plant life, either real or fake. Orchid bark provides a good substrate' These guys also like to burrow, so provide a container with some dampened moss. Never use sand!

You can visually sex Fire Skinks - males are a much brighter red than females and have black markings with white spots along their sides from the throat to mid body. Females are more of a reddish brown colour and lack the prominent black markings with the white spots.
Males DO fight, so it is adviseable to keep them singly or in sexed pairs only - with plenty of hiding spaces to allow the female to escape the male's attentions!
Fire Skinks are multi -clutched, the female can lay five or six small clutches per year if conditions are right and it is important to search possible laying areas regularly to remove and incubate any eggs found. Females will not lay in open areas, they will dig down close to rocks or under flat stones to lay thir eggs and even lay eggs inside potted plants.

These notes are not extensive, but should give a guide to a first time keeper.
Eric Davies