Skinks are a fascinating group of lizards, often sadly overlooked by keepers apart from one or two species such as Blue Tongue Skinks. The Golden Sun Skink is a small to medium sized undemanding skink which are very active and full of character. They are widespread throughout Asia occurring in a variety of habitats, it’s this adaptability that makes them very easy to maintain.
They are insectivorous and will readily eat most commercially produced livefood such as crickets, locusts and cockroaches. We’d suggest balancing their diet out even further with not only a varied diet but by also gut loading any livefood offered. This is a simple technique where vitamins and minerals are fed to the insects in their food. In turn, when the insect is eaten that same goodness is passed to the skinks. Another must do, dust the livefood with a good quality multi-vitamin and mineral supplement balanced for lizards. This can be done every other feed and simply means place the livefood in a container with some of the powder, giving it a shake and then placing the livefood into the vivarium. Easy!
Housing is relatively easy to – a 3-4 feet long vivarium, perhaps 2 feet tall is ideal. They require a basking temperature of around 32C, with cooler areas within the vivarium. Overhead heating to simulate the suns heat is required. A vastly debated topic, heating, we personally would use a ceramic bulb heater – other options would be halogen or incandescent bulbs, or maybe even a mix with larger vivaria. Provide lighting in the form of a T5 12{cb5d0a8cf0c44aef2db327d9ab0dba08dd09aed1126b509e5fa01d3aaa87fe47} tube, something like a Reptile System or Zoo Med tube is ideal. They do like to burrow a little, so use a subtrate that will allow this. Plenty of décor in the form of hides, branches and other bits and bobs, along with the essential water bowl finishes the vivarium off.
If followed this species is hardy and doesn’t provide too many problems, they are not known for being particularly tame. Some do allow handling, but be careful they can move at lightning speed! For me personally, I love this species with fond memories keeping them many years ago as a child. Give them a go!