Despite being an aridlland species, Scincopus is not at all like a sandfish.
I’ll start this article with a question: Is Peter’s Banded Skink, Scincopus fasciatus, going to be a species that disappears quickly from the American herp hobby?

The reason for this question is that many species, once rarely seen and coveted, then so readily available that they were accessible to anyone who wanted one and had a few dollars to spend, have again become rare, if not in nature, at least in the trade. Some are now virtually unobtainable. I’ll just mention a few here to jog your memories: Colombian horned frogs, spiny hill turtles, Asian keeled box turtles, pipe snakes, almost any European herp, and Mexican dwarf pythons, are among the many. These were imported (sometimes in the hundreds, even thousands), were deemed to inexpensive to bother setting up in long-standing captive populations, and then they slipped quietly from sight. Could Scincopus soon be added to the “here then gone” list? It’s possible.

What is Scincopus? As mentioned above it is a skink from North Africa. It is pleasingly colored, being yellowish with 7 or 8 broad black bars that cross the back and stop about midway down the sides and a black tailtip. It is adult at about 8-10 inches in length, tail included. It is a heavy bodied burrower that has often been referred to as a giant sandfish—but a sandfish it is not. The toes of Scincopus are only weakly flanged, as opposed to the excessive flanges of the sandfish. Also, Scincopus is of far greater bulk than the more streamlined sandfish. Rather than swimming through the arid desert sands this skink seems to be a burrowing resident of sandy grasslands and croplands. They are fairly quiet and are easily handled.

I received my first examples of this pretty burrowing skink way back in the 1980s. They proved to be 2 males, and try though I did, I could not find a female available anywhere in the world. They fed on all manner of insects, would take an occasional pinky mouse and would accept some of the veggie mixture I prepared for the blue-tongued skinks. I had these for many years. As far as I know, when these died there no others in the USA.

I believe they were then unknown in the herp hobby until 2014 or 2015. But when the export doors opened they opened wide, and hundreds of the Scincopus flooded the pet trade. Herp importers were selling them first in the $200 to $300 dollar range, but then as the influx continued the price dropped to $70 to $100 dollars each. I have never attempted breeding this species. I did find 1 record of successful breeding on line. Ovoviviparity is the reported mode of reproduction. Perhaps you will be the one to second this.

But today as I scan importers listings the majority of the mentions read “out of stock.” So now I wonder will more be imported or has the skink become unavailable? I wonder further if anyone has actually set up breeding colonies of this skink? Or is it already a member of the “here then gone” list? Time will tell.