If your animal looks pre-shed (dulled, slight pearl), add a 60-second midday mister cycle starting tomorrow.
Pre-shed week — humidity up, handling down.
Five to seven days before a visible shed, the keeper's job is to make the cage humid and the room calm. Skin will do the rest.
Pre-shed coloration (dulled body, slight pearl sheen on the casque, lower contrast on the bars) is your cue to shift the cage's microclimate. Add a midday mister cycle of 60 seconds, run the fogger an extra hour overnight, and keep the dripper running at its normal pace. Avoid handling, photographs from inside the cage, or any cage modifications.
A clean shed completes in two to four days. If patches retain past day five — particularly around the toes or the casque crown — gently mist them with warm distilled water and provide a humid hide leaf cluster, but do not pull retained skin. If retention is still there at day eight, that is a vet conversation.
DSQUARED Reptiles — Living Art. Curated Genetics.
From the field notes archive.
The morning baseline photograph.
A single weekly photo, taken at the same hour and angle, will tell you more about your care than any forum thread ever could.
Tightening screen tension on a year-old cage.
After twelve months of misting cycles and live plant weight, screen panels sag in ways that quietly compromise climbing surfaces.
A 72-hour gutload window for dubia roaches.
Dubia gutloads peak somewhere between 48 and 72 hours after the colony moves onto a fresh diet. Here's the schedule we run.