Blue Beauty Anole (Anolis equestris potior) - Care and Breeding

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the channel today we're going to be talking about the crown jewel of my collection the blue beauty and nulls nullis equestrious podior they are by far the most rare the most valuable species that i'm currently working with and they're also one of my favorites i say that about everything but it's true they are a lot of fun they're a nice medium-sized lizard from cuba they're one of the sub-species of the common cuban and null which is all over the place there's even you know a large population living in florida but this subspecies only comes from one particular island in cuba and they are very very rare there are a handful of people out there like myself that are breeding them and starting to getting them out into the hobby so they should become more and more available as time goes on which is awesome because they make wonderful displays and they're just wonderful beautiful animals so stick around and find out how i keep mine and breed them i'm frank payne biology teacher reptile breeder and former zookeeper i'm here to share with you my passion and experience working with these beautiful and fascinating animals welcome to living art all right let's talk about how we set up their habitat so i'm keeping my two pairs that's the only adults i have right now i have two breeding pairs that are about three years old or so at this point i was one of the first people to purchase them when they became available here in the states and they started to breed for me last year and it's really picking up this year which is absolutely awesome so i'm keeping these two pairs in leap habitats which i am a consultant for and also sell on my website these are prototype enclosures they're 22 inches wide 72 17 inches deep and 30 inches tall the ones that you can actually buy from me are actually six inches taller which is nice so they're even better than the ones that i have here right now but they're just absolutely perfect enclosures for keeping them they look fantastic and well they're just a perfect size and orientation for them so let's take a look inside one of the enclosures uh this one's not quite as attractive as this one because you know the plant i've had to hack back a lot a lot so they didn't shade them too much but because they're breeding so well in it i don't want to mess with it and put like a nicer looking plant like they're happy in it it's not the nicest looking plant but i'm going to leave it alone this one i think is a little bit nicer so let's go on over here i'm going to open up the door here we are all right so i have a live plant this is a chefalera umbrella plant and then i have multiple fairly thick branches you know about you know you can see here going up and down diagonal and then they can also climb on the sides of the terrarium whether it's you know smooth like the chloroplasts and asleep or glass or screen of course they can climb on it just fine they do have lamellae sticky toe pads like geckos excuse me so they can climb no problems they will utilize the sides as well but they really like vertically oriented that's normally how they would travel and move in in the wild their uh canopy dwelling uh knolls are often called crown giants because they live in the crowns of large trees in cuba so vertically diagonally oriented branches i do have a horizontal cork tube here so they do go in there to hide on occasion for the most part they're out and they're very active animals so i have my live plant have my branches basking spots shaded spots it's all about giving the animals choices all right they can get down in here if they choose to get cool and shaded and more humid or they could be up in here where it's drier and hotter and more exposed to the light so life plant i think is a must thick branches also a must and then a cork tube is nice because they do like to go in there to feel secure on occasion the awesome thing about these leap habitats is you can actually screw right through here it's just coroplast it's polypropylene so it's very easily drilled through so you can mount your branches very securely through the sides if you do want ones that are more horizontal most of these i just have wedged in though let's talk temperatures now uh when you're a reptile keepers one of these is absolutely indispensable i recommend that everybody get one you can get them relatively cheap 15 20 on amazon or most other sellers so this is an infrared temperature gun so it's really quick easy checks of the temperature so let's take a look and see what my temperatures are so here i have the basking spot if you i do have a halogen bulb it's a relatively low wattage one you can see there in the back come on in as you can see her basking underneath it you can see the yellow bulb right there that's the halogen bulb that she can bask on that in two different locations so let's give it a hot spot back in there about 100 degrees yep and that's about what i want to aim for so 100 degrees there at the hottest spot she's sitting at about 90 91 degrees that's a perfect hot spot 90 to 100 degrees for a hot spot now let's take a look back here ambient temperature is about 81 at the high spot now if i go all the way down here and check down to 73. so this this enclosure relatively small you know two foot by three foot more or less i i've achieved temperatures from 73 degrees all the way up to 100 degrees very sunny very shaded right it's all about giving the animals choices going back to temps for just a brief moment i do want to say that these are summer temperatures right now we're in the summer we're in the breeding season nice and warm during the winter i dropped those temperatures by about 10 degrees so everything that you saw there 100 degrees basking spa 80 degree ambient 73 cool spot i drop all those by about 10 degrees for a few months in the winter this allows them to rest they stop breeding they slow down allows them to recharge a little bit next up is lighting i have three different lights on my null enclosures on pretty much all of my enclosures actually i have a high output led bulb for daylight for plant growth for circadian rhythms i also have a t5 high output uv bulb i use a 10.0 bulb on them they do like strong uv light and then i also have a halogen basking spot now what wattage to use will depend on your room your location probably like 40 to 60 watts of a halogen bulb is adequate when it comes to light duration here in the summer i give them 14 hours of light on in the spring and in the fall 12 hours on 12 hours off in the winter i drop that down to only about 10 hours of light during the day next is water and humidity now hydration for the species is really really important i found they really need a lot of water in order to be at their best in order to breed at their best as well so i hit hydration kind of a three-pronged way so one i do have automatic misting systems and nozzles installed in these the awesome thing about leap habitats is they come with punch outs that you can install a misting nozzle in there either a leap misting nozzle or a mist king misting nozzle so that comes goes in there just like this looks great right and you don't have to cut through the screen or anything like that so that goes on several times a day morning evening sometimes in the middle of the day sometimes at night i do vary that seasonally they do experience kind of a wet season and a dry season throughout the year so that does vary more hydration more rain in the summertime and then the rainy season now i don't want to over water this because i do have this bioactive i do have substrate in the bottom that the plants growing i don't want to water too much i don't want to just try to go set and forget right i put kind of like the minimum amount of water via my automatic misting system that keeps the plants hydrated it gives them an opportunity to drink in case i'm really busy but i do like to go at least once a day sometimes twice a day to use a hand mister now i have this one right here i have a pretty large collection so i have a large mister this is a ryobi one that has a battery in here and you can change the intensity of it so pretty much every day i go through let me turn it on that might be helpful and give the whole enclosure a really really good soak and you'll often see you can see that female up there she starts to drink right away they really really love moisture love water it rains all the time in cuba especially in the wet season so a lot of water is very very important i do also provide them with a water bowl which you see down there at the bottom i've seen them utilize the water bowl occasionally but not too often mostly it's by this misting here so i really really saturate the the enclosure as you see here give them an opportunity to drink keep going keep going keep going right i could even go longer than that but you know for the sake of the video and there i mean you could see like her colors just really started to pop when that hydration came in when that water came in you come in here and take a look at her like her coloration improved just right away just from getting that water you know it's real happy about that and then they'll go through and drink off the sides of the enclosure off the leaves and that will increase the humidity as well i do try to aim for a pretty high humidity especially in the summer and the spring um 60 to 80 percent during the day 80 to 100 at night and those values can be reduced by 10 to 15 20 percent uh in the winter months next is feeding and nutrition these guys are omnivores they do uh eat a lot of insects in the wild but also they would eat a lot of lizards as well smaller anils i really don't duplicate that part in captivity although i'm sure they would go bonkers for them i just worry about like parasites and things like that plus just finding a reliable source of healthy smaller animals to feed them is a bit difficult much easier for people say living in florida or something like that so i don't really give them feeder lizards although they i'm sure that they would go bonkers for them i feed them mostly insects like super worms crickets dubia roaches and their absolute favorite is silkworms they love silkworms they go absolutely crazy for them they're nutritious for them they're full of hydration so i feed them silkworms as often as i'm able to get them like i said they're also omnivores they do eat some fruit matter give them fresh bananas berries mango melon and then the prepared gecko diets i use the pangea complete diets they occasionally eat those i know some people see them eat those more than me they do eat them some for me they don't eat them a ton but the great thing about having those diets in there is that the insects will come and eat them and become more nutritious i do dust every single feeder insect with either plain calcium pure calcium powder or a multivitamin supplement like rapashi calcium plus i do mostly the calcium and maybe like once a week i use the apache calcium plus at this point i feed them about three or four times at most a week sometimes if i try to feed them uh more than three times a week the food just gets left they don't need to eat as much as you think they do i tend to go around every monday wednesday and friday feed them as much as they will eat at that time remove any excess next is breeding so like i said they i started breeding them a little bit last year i had some success and this year they're really starting to take off which is awesome now i do keep them as pairs they seem to be very sociable they tend to seem like they have a nice uh bond with their their partner they often sleep next to each other i've seen zero aggression between males and females so i do keep them together year round that allows them to mate and to reproduce whenever they feel the need they lay one egg at a time but they can do so up to once a week i have not gotten mine to lay every seven days some people have been able to do that i might maybe my setup is not quite as dialed in as theirs but i have i am starting to get mine to lay every 10 or 12 days or so which is great uh but even like if they lay at one egg every month that's still pretty awesome um so uh then also once they lay those eggs the incubation time is relatively short we're talking like 30 or 40 days incubation i incubate them at 82 to 83 degrees fahrenheit another really good tip for breeding which i got from a friend of mine david aldean who's a fantastic breeder of this species and other reptiles is to only allow them to use some of the substrate to lay their eggs if you come on over here don't mind the silkworm carnage that they've left behind them but if you see over on this side i have cork panels on this half of the enclosure so that they cannot actually dig down whereas this side is all opened up so that i they can lay their eggs in here so i'll go through and dig every week or so to check for eggs and you notice how i have this end opened up so it's just a little breeder hack for you to kind of guide your animals to lay where you want them to lay to make your life much easier i love bioactive enclosures but they can be difficult for finding eggs but you can structure your bio active enclosure so that egg finding is still relatively easy so all the the stuff is over here i have this all covered up with cork so they can't lay there nice open area for me to dig and look for eggs and that will work very well for other species that you're keeping in bioactive like crested geckos gargoyle geckos chameleons you name it let's talk handle ability and the view beauty anole as a pet now you notice i haven't really held them in this video all trying to interweave some video of me holding them in the past i generally don't hold them very often they don't like it they have quite sharp claws believe it or not so they will kind of shred your skin pretty good they will bite for the most part they are quite bold you can see they've been sitting out the whole time that i've been here uh and they'll eat off of tongs and so and things like that so they're wonderful display animals very bold very active they'll go through their awesome mating rituals with their head bobbing and and awesome head movements so you get to see all that stuff all the time they don't hide very often but it's not really a pet animal some do get more calm than others but for the most part this is a look but don't touch pet alright guys i hope that you enjoyed learning about how i keep and breed this wonderful species of and all they are starting to breed for me pretty well this time of year so hopefully i will have babies available in the summer of 2022 which is when we're i'm recording this right now so check back with me if you're interested in working with this species make sure you go to my website for that it's livingartbyfrankpain.com that's where i sell all of my animals and on my website you can also find these wonderful leap habitats the habitats lighting substrate misting fogging all the stuff that you need to set up wonderful enclosures just like i do all available on my website again livingartbyfrankpain.com i have plenty more videos coming up this summer if you have any ideas shoot me a message leave them in the comments make sure that you do like and subscribe to my youtube channel uh same thing on facebook same thing on instagram make sure you check out leap habitats on all those platforms too give them a follow doing a lot of great stuff together this summer as well thanks for watching see you next time

Channel: Living Art by Frank Payne

Views: 11,135

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Id: rhYlRAUBZlE

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Mon May 30 2022