Breeding Rare Wild-Caught Reptiles | Reptiliatus

i just found this baby in there like chilling with the adults i'm like i i was walking by and i see sappy which is the female and she's very bold now for a red eye croc for excuse me red eye crocodile snake and there's yeah this little flash of orange beside her like it darted back i was like wait what so i go in with like my iphone light i just kind of gently shine it down under the wood and i can see it's like head there like oh my gosh like they hatched a baby like in the enclosure like so yeah we worked out a deal and everything and so the thing is yes you mentioned they're so rare um he got them i don't know it must have been like maybe two or three years before they were listed to sighties one which is necessary but unfortunately it makes it so hard to get more or anything do you mind telling us how much you paid for them i don't mind [Music] welcome to episode number 94 of the animals at home podcast my name is dylan perrin thank you so much for tuning in today so today i'm speaking with diane solani who is the creator of the youtube channel reptiliatus reptilia addis is a very popular canadian youtube channel that passed 100 000 subscribers earlier this year now in the episode of course we discuss how dion got into specialty pet keeping in the first place but really we spent a good amount of time focusing on introducing and using wild caught animals for breeding projects in captivity we discuss how important it is that if we are importing wild caught animals that those animals are being used in captive breeding programs and how really it's sort of pointless to have a wild caught animal like a wild caught toke gecko end up at petsmart and be sold to you know a kid for twenty dollars in that way we're really not helping the wild populations of these animals and if we are going to be importing wild caught animals they do need to be or they should be participating in captive breeding programs and that's exactly what we discussed today especially with two of dion's projects specifically his red eyed crocodile skinks and his shiny soros which is the chinese crocodile lizards both pretty breeding projects are well underway and it is incredibly exciting and dion really laid out the details for both of those projects and dion also has a pair of varanes priscinus which is the emerald tree monitor so he talks about how he works with that species and how he's implemented some training programs with them and we also cover his europlatus fantasticus breeding project which is the satanic leaf tail gecko because he's actually taken that project and he's downgraded it from a complete bioactive setups all the way back down to something that's a little more sterile and manageable so we discuss why he did that and the success that he's now having with those setups you know we've talked about on the podcast before bioactivity is not always the gold standard and sometimes it can over complicate things so he talks about that process and why what's working for him now is working and we wrap up the conversation with his youtube channel down's actually been on youtube with reptiliatus from i think 12 years now so he talks about how it's progressed why he started it how it's progressed over time and where his plans are for the future so before we jump into the episode let's do our housekeeping real quick if you enjoyed the episode and you're looking for more information on it head to animals at home network dot com there you will find links to the show notes in the show notes i have a sort of a breakdown of each episode and they include links of things discussed in the episode so there's where you're going to want to go if you want more information for something discussed you can also find links to the shop on there where you can buy yourself an animals at home t-shirt where five dollars does automatically get donated to the amazon rainforest conservancy thank you very much to customreptilehabitats.com for sponsoring this episode of the podcast you can find affiliate links in both the youtube description as well as the show notes if you're in the market for a new reptile cage i highly recommend going to check them out of course if you do make a purchase a small commission will come back to me at no extra cost to you and if you do want early access to episodes as well as the opportunity to submit questions to upcoming guests make sure you join us on patreon at patreon.com animals at home all right let's jump into today's episode enjoy dion welcome to the podcast thank you so much for doing this oh my pleasure and thank you for having me i've been really excited about having the opportunity to come on here yeah well it's always great to talk to another canadian and obviously your channel has been doing so well over the past few years you just hit 100 000 subscribers and you're you know you blew past 100 000 subscribers so congrats on that and we'll get into that but one thing i wanted to start with initially is i noticed that you start using the term specialty pets instead of exotic pets and i was wondering if there was if there was some intention behind that and if there was what was that yeah so i don't know i mean at the end of the day we can acknowledge and then both agree that like yes in some ways these animals are exotic in nature but i've had a few conversations with other canadians about kind of changing or at least using an other form of language to address the animals just because unfortunately whenever it comes to anything negative about the animals it's the association is always exotic and i find that there's also a lot of if i'm not mistaken social media platforms that kind of flag the word exotic too i think facebook's doing this i could be wrong um but i mean that's also by association of other things that are considered exotic so i'm using that language and sometimes i still say exotic but to kind of create i guess a different way of addressing the animals because the reality is most of the animals or at least quite a few of them we're working with they're not they're not like for example all while caught there's many animals that really are as do i say well not domesticated but like have been bred in captivity as regularly as say hamsters even more so than many types of tropical fish and i kind of want to change the language because when people say exotic we just automatically assume that it's this like wild s animal sometimes that's like super savage or who knows what maybe aggressive dangerous and when you look at like a bearded dragon how many generations is that bred in captivity a crested gecko and yes there is some representation a hobby of animals that are sort of new and every animal that's found its way into let's say the pet trade or being kept in captivity originated from wild caught animals and that's a whole topic on its own i suppose but yeah i use the topic or i use the like i use specialty pets because i just think that that language like sure specialty could insinuate that it's sort of like a more challenging animal to care for and sometimes or in some cases that is true but i think it just kind of yeah it changes the language or at least creates more language around instead of always like exotic pet you think of like um you know tigers and things like that and i mean that that's again a whole other thing as well but um i think that that can be hopefully a helpful thing in adding more language to when we discuss like keeping reptiles amphibians and vertebrates and other things like that so yeah it kind of makes sense but it totally makes sense and it's funny because i had a conversation with another canadian keeper as well maybe we were talking to the same person this is more of a recent conversation and it was sort of the same thing as the term exotic has sort of been taken on by other parties the animal rights groups love that term and you're right it does have this it gives you this weird image that it's just taking from the wild and it's exotic and it's like mystical and you think of like miami in the 70s where everybody had exotic animals and it's not the right image so i i was having this conversation then i started watching more of your videos and all of a sudden i started hearing you say specialty and i'm like i wonder if if that was a an intentional change and i think it makes sense it is and they are specialty pets and we do want to separate them from that you know crazy wild caught market absolutely yeah i mean the only concern i've ever had with that terminology but i feel like it's still fairly appropriate is is like i don't yeah i mean you could say you could have an argument or discussion about what's more challenging to keep a dog or a certain type of reptile and i would argue in some cases some of the specialty pets are more easy to keep than a dog considering the commitment and attention and everything a dog requires training you name it um i worry because that's like specialty pets like oh you can only keep these if you have like a set of specific skills but we do want to create some form of distinction but it's trying to do it without taking the negative connotation that's unfortunately started to become associated with the word exotic i think so it is weird because i mean this is very similar to the conversation i was having with this other keeper is we're looking for a better word and specialty is maybe doesn't fit perfect but it's kind of as good as it gets right now maybe eventually we'll come up with something better but for now i think it works fine yeah i think so too yeah i mean we're constantly evolving in every aspect of the hobby so i'm fine changing it up when it comes so tell me about your journey with specialty pets what drew you to them initially yeah so i mean i always say this it's like the cheesy story of being a small child honestly for for as long as i can remember i've always had this passion and love for reptiles specifically and i think as a child there was also that really like immense fascination with dinosaurs i mean i i as a small child growing up in like the 90s i had so many jurassic park toys and i was playing with dinosaurs uh i'd want to see every dinosaur movie like you know and um i'd watch different tv shows and i'd go to my local library and rent with my mom some of the like videotapes of national geographic and just watch documentaries on reptiles and amphibians and yeah i mean honestly it's just this like do i call it an innate love for the animals uh it's just always been there and i think as far as keeping the specialty pet goes um i i was very fortunate to go up in a household that my parents and i've discussed this in brief and some of my content were very supportive and enabled me to explore that love and passion so i mean as a young child i grew up with like a fish tank at a certain point i kept my first lizard it was a bearded dragon named kovu the lion king and we found out she was a female but that's fine classic happens with reptiles all the time exactly right um and then i think where i started developing like an interest in breeding that came from the encouragement i think of a friend or two in high school we uh were breeding crested geckos and i think after it must have been like literally the moment i produced my first crested gecko it was just such a not to be too cheesy but like magical experience to have you know successfully raise these animals that you have an immense love for and appreciation for and like learning about and observing and then being able to like successfully have them reproduce and seeing that little offspring emerge from the egg there's something really i don't know not even mysterious but just really magical about that and um i wouldn't call myself like a breeder or anything uh because a lot of people message me and be like oh where's your website that you sell all your animals on it's like well to be honest like i'm not trying to really do that i have my projects and things that i really enjoy um and i mean i guess we'll get into that but i i do it out of love for the animals and i think there's a certain level of fulfillment you get from being able to reproduce the animals sure there's like elements of maybe stress and other things that you have to watch out for with breeding the animals too but it's sort of like the full circle experience especially for some of the species i keep it aren't always as common um but yeah like uh i don't know i just yeah i've started wanting to get into keeping more species and learning about how to keep them properly because i'm a firm believer that it's it's a continuous learning process and growth process that we're constantly evolving the way we keep the animals and looking for the next best way to do it it's never like this is the only way and i mean we know that too because there's always more than one right way to keep an animal but we always should be telling ourselves like there's gonna be something down the road that we can learn about that'll further improve the way we keep the animal especially since reptiles are so good at surviving even when they're not necessarily thriving right so it's not an illusion per se but yeah so i don't know for me it's just been there's that passion and then it's driven by this opportunity here to learn about the animals in your home and i think when you're breeding them too it's like just an extra sense of fulfillment if that makes sense yeah it does and i i want to get more detailed into your breeding in a second but there's something i just thought of as you're talking about this you know there are a lot i've never bred reptiles it's something that eventually one day i would like to maybe try but there are obviously a lot of people that do breed and i would say there's a lot of people that breed i don't want to say the wrong species but we have too many people breeding certain species we can put it that way and i think partly that's probably due to that just amazing feeling you get when you breed right like you're describing this this full circle experience when it comes out of the egg you're just you can't believe how exciting that is and that feeling you probably want to continue to replicate and so what i love about what you're doing is you're working with different species and we're going to get into that in a little bit but i could see why breeding could somewhat become a little bit addictive to people because of that feeling and you're wanting to replicate that feeling so i'm always talking about maybe we could people who love that feeling maybe we could shift them over to different species so we can have more species diversity but do you think that that is one of the the do you think there is an element of addiction in in keeping and breeding reptiles i definitely think there can be and i that's one of the things i i think i mean it's hard to say that that's what i'm doing with the amount of animals i keep but like i think moderation is always important like for me i i really ensure that i don't exceed my limits of what i'm capable of caring for because i'm a one-man team and yeah like i've expanded um the amount of animals i keep i try to avoid using the word collection because you know they're not trading cards they're animals right but um it's another word that we don't have a good replacement for yeah when you speak but uh yeah i mean i i've kind of grown the amount of animals i'm keeping since i've started doing the youtube thing which we'll again discuss like full time so it's allowed me to have all that extra time you know it's 40 extra hours that i'm not working doing something else that i can focus on the animal care and attention but uh as far as sorry answering your question like sure it's a magical feeling i mean i don't know what for me it's not necessarily that like i have a lot of other motives behind why i breed for me it's very much so what you're addressing like a lot of the species i'm working with are a lot less common and don't really have captive representation in the hobby so that's kind of the drive behind a lot of my projects some of the animals that i'm reproducing and again i know you want to address this so i won't like talk about it too much but are also just animals that i i very much love reproducing but they sort of help fund and make everything more sustainable in the meantime as well so they're like popular species that i know that there's a strong market for that i'm producing to help offset the cost of everything else if that makes sense so yeah no that makes perfect sense so before we get into the breeding just one thing that i find interesting about the animals that you keep is you and you can kind of let us know what are some of the species you keep but they are sort of i wouldn't say strange or anything but more unique because we have those staple you know the crested geckos i know you keep those as well but the the classics crested gecko corn snake ball python bearded dragon those things but your collection does have a different tilt to it have you always been drawn to different things or or is that just something that you built on over time yeah um so i mean if i can say like i mean i i think i started off keeping all the the more common popular species so like i as i or may not have mentioned that my first reptile was a bearded dragon but funny enough before that i was keeping fire belly toads and um then i think yeah as i mentioned i got into keeping crested geckos and bred those for a bit and that really ignited that love or interest in like wow like breeding the animals would be cool and it's not to say that everything i've ever kept i've wanted to breed either but um i don't know like my i haven't always kept rare rare animals but i think part of it was like seeing that there's some representation of certain species in the hobby and unfortunately for some of them they are really just fed or i guess available through wild caught imports and so it was sort of like well what is this i mean i really think that animal is incredible but if i'm going to keep it i'd like to be able to really learn about it and associate myself with and and develop friendships or connections with people around the world using tools like social media to see who is successfully keeping these animals and make sure that i'm doing the same because i for one am a fairly firm believer that if an animal is coming into the trade from the wild i feel that its sacrifice so to say should be that because you know made it this far it should go into the hands of someone who is going to systematically attempt to reproduce the animal in captivity i really don't like the idea of wild caught animals coming into any sort of pet trade and becoming individual pets and you know the argument that it's wrong for animals to come out of the wild like conservation is a whole thing for sure but we know that whether it's fish and other things animals come into the wild or come into captivity from the wild i should say but everything started that way you know whether it was a syrian hamster or a goldfish that's very easy to breed in captivity it's about what we do with those animals once they've come into captivity and we have to really like you said like encourage each other that you know whether it's having that love for breeding or whatever it is like we need to be breeding these animals and not just keeping them as single individual pets like that's such a shame to do it that way so for me um i think i just started becoming really interested in some of those species that i'm only seeing like imported for example the red-eyed crocodile skinks like they're such a v like very unique and um fascinating looking animal but they're predominantly available in the trade as wild caught animals coming out of indonesia so i ended up having a pair of them at a certain point requiring a pair of them through a reptile show i went to and they did really well for me like they produce a few offspring a year and i have them set up a certain way and it's working very well it's quite functional and one of the amazing things about their biology is the way they actually let their young live with them for quite some time and i know that there are people that choose not to do that but my experience has been that it's very successful i have offspring living with their parents that are over two years old and haven't reached sexual maturity and they're completely like there's an amicable relationship there very minimal food competition um it's super neat but then you're like well what is happening to all these animals that are coming into the trade so a lot of my projects are like very systematic that i i want to try and contribute to systematically i'm saying that a lot there right uh you know reproducing the animals in captivity and then also helping by using my platform to show that process to encourage others and also help anyone else who has that same interest if that makes sense yeah no that it makes a lot of sense and i think that's exactly right so can you list through a few of the species that you keep so just paint a picture for those that don't know yeah oh for sure so uh i mean i have your more common uh decrested geckos than i have a few females and i have uh toki geckos that i keep and breed i also keep my red-eyed crocodile skinks i keep i used to keep quite a few species of the uroplatus or leaf tail geckos but i now i'm solely keeping the fantasticus the satanic leaf tail geckos i also have my shinysaurus the chinese crocodile lizards which are really special i mean all of them are special but they're really unique and special privilege to have those three animals and where else do i go i have my uh solo little dude et is a diamida spenglerite that's the vietnamese black breasted leaf turtle i have sierra which is my mexican black king snakes just a juvenile female then i keep quite a few dendrobates and other dart frog species so i have uh two species of uh or two localities rather of tinctorius the dander babies truncatus a few of the uh phantysmal the santa isabella dar frogs a pair of uh blue jeans camellio theofaga pomegos out of nicaragua where else am i going with this who am i missing did you mention the monitors and of course yes thank you so and then yeah i have my varanas priscinus the green tree monitor so i have a pair of those animals just both juveniles from uh canadian cowboys yeah so you have a very eclectic group of animals there which is great yeah so yeah we'll jump into the breathing but but even with toki geckos for example as far as i know in canada anyway it seems like a lot of the toki geckos were wild caught i see them in pet land and petsmart all the time i think there may have been some societies changes i'm not exactly sure if that's made an impact but maybe you could talk about that but even breeding those is even though they're a common species that is a rare captive bred animal yeah so again i mean that gets into the do i call it politics of breeding and supply and demand issues like part of the reality is and it's again it's tricky because a lot this is i think involves or pertains how do i say it dresses more people that breed as a living i think that there's lack of motivation to breed an animal that is commonly brought in from the wild because it's very hard to compete with the prices exactly so people lose motivation to breed species because it's an investment of course and oftentimes the way you go about it you're not always even breaking even depending on what kind of animal it is right so or you have to have a certain amount to start actually making a profit and if that's what your motivation is then sure you're not interested in doing that unfortunately slash fortunately uh it's weird because you know the way supply and demand works like when there's a certain rarity thrown into the mix and societies tends to do that people gain interest because it's like oh are we going to lose this species now or are they going to become harder to keep and if i'm not mistaken i think the tokens went to cities 2 is what they were listed reclassified under like a year two ago two years ago i think it was at the end of 2019 or so that it happened um right before everything changed yeah uh yeah so i mean regardless of that i will say i'm aware of several canadian hobbyists that are breeding tocas which is so nice to see in here and i do know a few um but uh yeah like is it yeah it's an interesting point like they're they're uh fairly common but i think it also has to do with their sort of more defensive temperament in nature and that's a whole other thing that i kind of do i'm not saying i'm like some magical guru dr doolittle but i do try and like condition the animals a bit to be more tolerant of interacting to whatever level they're interested in interacting me interacting with me well are they do you find that the captive born babies are a little bit softer when it comes to their temperament or are they just the same as sort of a defensive aggressive behavior as a classic tokay so i think it depends on the level of interaction you um you go for it in the sense of like your effort and what you put into it so for me at a certain point my goal was to raise hand tame tokay's but i got very busy with my move and other things and i just was like that's not the priority the animals are healthy they're happy that's cool so i can say with a certain level of confidence that the offspring i still have from my first pairing they're very tolerant of tongue feeding and they'll come like even out of the enclosure for food when it comes to actual handling very similar disposition to say whatever your typical toki like heck no lots of vocalization attempting to bite or run away uh had i put in the effort to kind of handle the animals or make that a more positive experience i think i really do feel they would have come round my adult male tiki he will like cautiously but he's happy to climb onto my arm for um like a super worm or something that he'd like to eat so i have gotten a lot of them to the point where they're i guess desensitized enough or conditioned to know that like nothing dangerous will happen if they come onto my body like my hand or arm for prey and i mean that's already pretty cool they're doing it like out of their own decision or will free will to decide i'm not like forcing the interaction and i think that also um says a lot about why it works well but yeah i i know like i've seen for a fact like i've seen um even other canadian hobbyists that have raised fairly hand-tamed token geckos and they're just like mossing on their hand or their arm or whatever not biting or anything and it's really cool to see but i do think it takes a lot of effort it's not something that just like happens out of nowhere like they're putting work in to get that relationship out of the animal well they are such a nice looking species and they're a large robust animal it'd be nice if they were i mean they are very popular but like we said it's just not not ideal that we're just poaching from the wild to you know for them to kiss because i remember the first time i saw one in petland it was super cheap it was like 20 dollars and i couldn't believe it i was like oh i love toad geckos they're so cool but it was then i realized yeah it's because it's just been ripped out of the wild and who knows that's why this gecko is so angry but let's jump into some of your more complex breeding projects maybe we'll start with the with the red eye crocs ganks because like you'd already started to mention them so maybe you could just lay out you said you already had some sort of breeding and but you've expanded that project since then yeah so as i was discussing so i've had my original pair of red eye crocodile skinks i want to say since like i think 2017 in the falls when i purchased them from tails and scales actually at a reptile show and they were very like clear that these were wild caught imports and so i purchased the two animals and i mean i did some research from what i could find and join a few facebook groups and everything and i ended up housing them and it's funny because i know a lot of people suggested like really large enclosures but i found that they were like so shy i i decided to house them in like a 15 gallon long enclosure and um create like a paludarium sort of setup so i knew that the animals enjoyed spending time in water because initially i was housing them in an enclosure that had like a large water dish and i'd always catch them bathing and then bolting into the hide once they saw me kind of thing so i was like okay well how do i do this in a better fashion that gives them more water space um offers them i keep looking mistakes i'm looking at the enclosures they're just over there offers them a filtration you know more mechanical filtration to keep the water clean and everything longer and so i yeah i created like a slope and a barrier but then i made my drainage layer part of the i guess mechanical filtration offering more porous space for beneficial bacteria to colonize the hydroton and other things and yeah so i had the pear go in there i planted it heavy with pothos so they could store some of the nitrates and everything and um yeah i think it took like maybe a year like my goal was i was i was definitely very optimistic that at some point they might breed but the funny thing is i remember is that i had the animals for at least a year before i suddenly found an egg in the enclosure and i was just like wow that's cool and the first egg that they gave me i actually removed from the enclosure and decided to incubate manually myself and after the incubation period that animal hatched but unfortunately it had i guess prolapsed an organ of some sort i don't know what and it wasn't like you know i'm not like novice here it wasn't just like the yolk still attached to the the the abdomen or anything it was like there was something protruding and it was it was terrible it passed maybe within a few hours of being born unfortunately and then the second time so i knew i should also add sorry these animals generally speaking so the female has one functioning ovary which is very interesting so they don't lay like two eggs at a time or more it's one egg at a time and generally speaking their they'll lay an egg and by the time that first animal has hatched from the egg the female's ovulation cycle has got it to a point where she's going to lay the second egg so usually every like 75 to 90 days when the female is reproducing she'll lay an egg and so um suddenly i think it was like a few months later like i mean twice the amount of time i just found this baby in there like chilling with the adults i'm like i i was walking by and i see sappy which is the female and she's very bold now for a red eye crockett for excuse me red eye crocodile skin and there's yeah this little flash of orange beside her like it darted back i was like wait what so i go in with like my iphone light i just kind of gently shine it down under the wood and i can see it's like head there like oh my gosh like they hatched a baby like in the enclosure like i've had this i've been crazy enough with satanic leaf tails where i just suddenly found a baby and they're like oh my god i'm glad i found you you would have gotten eaten for sure but uh yeah they hatched the offspring and i had heard that i read a paper somewhere it's just troubling because i need to find where it was from but they were discussing like how this species exhibits some interesting behavior and actually moving their egg around the enclosure in captivity or i don't think it was documented in the wild to like i guess systematically offer it the needs throughout the incubation process if it's too dry move it somewhere else and i've actually seen an egg move around the enclosure i haven't seen them do it i'd love to catch them in the act but i've like seen an egg in one spot and then it wasn't there anymore and then it was somewhere else i don't know what they're doing there it's crazy oh yeah it's it's weird um and they get so big before they hatch too but uh yeah so that was very interesting and then also the fact that yes like the offspring will live with them for some time and if i were to assume based on how other animals were i would be more concerned about an animal reaching sexual maturity and being like a male for example and still being in that group but um as it stands now like i have some of those first offspring still with that pair and they're living quite comfortably in that group and i've had some other keepers from like germany contacting me like hey like how is that working because like i'm concerned are they really not being aggressive like no like i watch them there's very minimal food competition i have seen like for example one offspring grab a cricket and then the other one comes and you have that like jurassic park scene where they did or whatever and they share it um and i did also notice interesting behavior that a lot of the new like newly hatched neonates will actually um wait for the parents to grab a cricket and now i can't say this is systematic but it really looks like it and while they're chewing them they come run up to them and like pick something off it and then run off again so maybe they're just learning the behavior that it's an easy way to feed themselves but the adults don't seem to mind which is interesting they're not like trying to get away from them so they'll like you know grab a little cricket drumstick off the side and and they themselves are very capable of grabbing crickets too um but i just the way i go about feeding them is i just drop different sized crickets in anyway so sorry this is like this learning process and observing all these interesting things and here i am going okay well this is cool so let me put out the word and say like i have two babies at the time in the enclosure with the adults let me see who else has these animals maybe we can do like a breeding swap you know like i'll i'll offer you one of my offspring and you offer me one of yours and then now we have new bloodlines to work with and i quickly realized that the only messages i was getting back were people asking me hey so i know you're looking for trades but like would you consider selling me one like and that's very nice like i appreciate people's interest but like that wasn't my intention right like i really was hoping to swap some bloodlines and honestly i think i i didn't really find anyone maybe it was like a all reptiles in toronto they had one offspring and they wanted to hold on to it that was like the only person i could find that had any babies in canada so i was like okay well i guess i'm gonna have to do this myself like this is just a problem like they're doing pretty well for me what is this so i found someone who imported a bunch and uh i brought them in i bought eight of them i was hoping they would be able to sex them well for me and i set them all up the same way initially i had them in tubs to kind of do like a quarantined thing and i was trying to uh well i documented the whole process like if anyone wants to see it like i have i called it like the project mini dragon series on my channel it's been a bit of a rocky road unfortunately i did lose two of the animals um but uh it's one of those things you know some people will suggest that they're animals that don't do well coming out of the wild into quarantine they suggest setting them up naturalistically right away to minimize stress i don't know if you've heard any of that before like i've heard people doing that not with that specific species but i know i've talked to people that do that with wild caught just to minimize stress but in this case did that you don't think that worked or so yeah so the thing was that i first wanted to do the quarantine so i was i didn't want to keep them like dry on paper towel or anything so i had them set up with soil and water dishes and hives like cork like panels to hide under and everything and i felt that they just weren't doing well like i was weighing them like okay these guys are losing a bit of weight this is not good so initially i thought before i immediately start like exercising intervention with a vet which i really should have done with my vet immediately but i would set them up naturalistically and see how they did for a bit and they started not doing so well so i got in touch with my vet and we started treating them and all of that is documented on the channel because again i really want to use my platform to show people what i'm doing whether it's right or wrong but also like especially when it's right um to encourage them to do the same or or at least give them that option they can do that so they were all treated with um the safetasity well now sorry some of them were treated with ceftazine because there was a bit of a red blushing there was a concern for us that it was septicemia or something and then the others and those same animals were treated with panicure and what was the other drug actually i think i have it here let me just check i still have it over here because we just finished the treatment the other drug i think was for different type of a different group of parasites oh the metronidazole okay so they were all treated with that and i continued to weigh them and literally man like over the span of a few days uh the the animal in the worst condition nearly doubled in weight within a week really and yeah and i have this old sony camcorder it's like such a blessing to have i bought this is my first camera i invested in uh when i started my youtube channel it has a night vision setting so i use it to this day and these animals are rather crepuscular in nature so i'll record them and put dishes out of worms so i can document if they're actually eating because the uh new animals in particular just so shy that i never see them out so i've actually caught quite a bit of footage of the animals coming out and running around and doing their thing like they'll come down and drink from the water feature and tilt their heads up and swim and soak and then pick a worm off and run under the hives so i'm like yes okay so i know they're eating now and it's so just positive and reassuring to see and yeah so i guess like the update i hope to give in a week or so is that all those animals are really coming around now so it's exciting to me because it also clearly demonstrates a successful way of medicating while caught uh triple a notice like the red eye crocodusting so it i hope that people can find this content like right away they should consider that form of medication if they have wild caught animals that aren't thriving i mean obviously they should bring their animal to the vet a well-informed veterinarian and assess what the issue might be but like at the very least they have kind of like some form of blueprint to go by and know that this works they can even show that video their vet if they want um and uh yeah so that's kind of just been my journey with them right now it's amazing for one you have an incredible vet you have this amazing exotic vet that does and even film some videos with you because right now obviously you can't go into the clinic and so i'm glad that all of that worked out that's incredible yeah that's another thing i should say i should give huge thanks to alec brown he's just such a good vet it's funny we actually uh i mean like we didn't really go to school together so much but we like crossed paths and and i've known him for quite a few years so it's it's really nice to have a vet that you're actually friends with too and can have like informal conversations with about uh even his own projects like he breeds uh the lycodactylus williams and a lot of cool animals himself so um but yeah i'm so appreciative because it's it's one of the things i mean honestly everything i do on my channel and i know that you are a firm believer if like enrichment and such too but also besides that like i really try to encourage hobbyists to not only build a sense of community but to like emphasize that importance of always doing better and really striving for the animals to give them the best experience possible like living in captivity so um i think that there is and i know sorry i don't know if like we're going a little off the rails here because you asked about the red eye crocodile skinny project but it applies with alec or dr brown i should say um i really in recent months like after seeing the positive uh feedback on on doing these vet related videos because i was like well okay i have to go to the vet let me document it to show people i i really want to emphasize or show that like seeing a vet who's qualified to treat reptiles is an important thing and i think a lot of people are intimidated by it they assume that like they take their lizard it's going to be thousands or who knows what but in most cases it really isn't you're walking out of there having spent maybe 150 100 depending what it was and your pet is now like has a clean bill of health and so i really want to like remove the stigmas or you know uh with with that because a lot of people are like well i know better than my vet yeah like i know what to do like they don't understand and i'm not trying to say that there aren't cases where unfortunately there might be certain vets that don't have a lot of experience and like that is an issue in itself and i think as as a veterinarian medicine advances like there'll be you know a lot more training available and such but i think it's also so important to associate yourself with and then find a really good trained vet that can treat your animals and and not to shy away from that if it's a necessary thing like i having worked in um the pet store industry or like i mean i should say working in pet stores or retail i can't tell you the amount of times i've heard someone say like like the my leopard gecko was 70 bucks like yes when they when another you know they're like oh do you know how to this i think something's wrong with my leopard gecko it's tails going a bit thin like man i guarantee you would have spent 150 dollars to treat that animal maybe like it was some parasite issue or who you know some light antibiotics would have done the trick and everything would be fine um but i think a lot of people shy away from it because they assume they're going to have to take on this immense financial burden and it's not usually the case so especially if you regularly do it because you're not going to get that crazy surprise and i've even spoke to vets on the phone for free you know like email the clinic and say hey i have a quick question like if i could have like i'm i've been willing to pay for a consult on the phone if that's possible but they'll follow me and then no bill comes you know they just they're willing to have a 10 15 minute conversation with you i have a couple questions and yeah it's they are out there you just have to find the ones like you have you know the ones that know what they're talking about and there are lots of them out there but you have to be careful you don't go to like a dog vet and and then that's where you know run into trouble yeah and that happens too but so yeah like the thing that's just so wonderful with this is that we've discussed it in brief and well we've kind of had a few conversations about it and we see like how great and uh like the receptivity towards like people that they really want to see more of these vet related appointments and videos so we've kind of discussed that like i mean hopefully it's not going to be a negative thing like i don't want to have to go if i don't have to go but you know what i'm saying it's just that we're going to really try to show more of that and i'm so grateful appreciative that uh dr brown's willing to film that content like covet permitting or you know based on that situation it's just been so cool so um you know like we're looking forward to i mean i guess we're gonna talk about at some point but uh um the next ultrasound on the chinese crocodiles will probably be in the next week or two so that's another opportunity to film that's coming up and it's gonna be really cool so i have that playlist that i throw all the videos in that are like vet related and i think it's a really positive thing so it's really great to have that opportunity to show that to my audience yeah and it's you're doing a great job being a role model showing yes i use this as well and this is why it's important so as far as the wild caught skinks going they're obviously doing great now they're doing a lot better and so when do you have ideas when you'll pair them it won't be for a few months i'm sure or yeah so um funny enough and there's a whole story to how it happened like i ended up getting more stinks than i asked for and it became a bit of like a a thing but like currently i've sort of put some of the animals like i don't know i it's tough because i don't want to say i certainly don't take any credit i'm not spearheading this you know like there's a there are a lot of keepers in europe that are keeping their skinks a certain way and having a lot of success breeding them but they also would say like don't keep two females together they'll fight and i haven't experienced that so right now most of the animals that i'm keeping here are kept with the same sex so i do actually have a few animals cohabiting but they're not like paired up if that makes sense while they're being treated and they're getting along fine funny enough most of the time despite the fact they have several hiding spots where they could easily get away from each other they'll choose to rest side by side through the day so i don't know maybe if suddenly there was more room or less room there would be a territorial response but like the way i'm doing it and that's something i always emphasize in my videos that i'm not like some supreme like infallible source of information i always express my um experience of keeping animals as like something i'm learning about constantly and and sharing what i learned with my audience like i don't ever want them to think that i know everything and like i make mistakes too and i try my best not to but uh um anyhow so the way i've been keeping them now is like yes there are animals that are cohabiting but they're not like systematically put together or breed especially not in that condition so yes the hope would be that hopefully as their weights go up um and i just see continuous like good feeding behavior and it's nice because i'm starting to see some of them actually come out now during the day while i'm typing of course i look over and they dart away but that's normal uh then yeah like i'll look at pairing them up and my hope is that i'm being kept the same way as i guess my og pair the original pair there they're gonna hopefully have the same uh i guess willingness to to reproduce so i don't expect that to happen soon seeing how long it took the other ones to kind of settle or kick in a gear but yeah that's the hope so i mean if all goes well like i have quite a few of them there's um in total i have literally five pairs of the crocodile skins and three juvenile offspring and it was very sweet i actually had a subscriber and i made the video last year who contacted me a few months ago actually offering me their pair for free because they saw the project i was doing and and they themselves were i guess not really having any luck breeding them and thought that they might do better in my care and i was like honestly i was just blown away like just so generous and i was like are you sure like i'd be happy to buy them or like this is just quite act of generosity so they just joined their group now and they're like long-term caught like they've been in captivity for so long and it makes me think of the whole weight thing that i mentioned because those animals one of them he's had for 12 years in captivity and they weigh about almost twice as much as any of the other skinks i have so it really makes me wonder like what do we know about these animals like how long are they like reproductively functional like how long can they actually breed how long can they live yeah because they don't look worn out they're very healthy they're just like twice the size of some of the other ones that have all the i guess mature coloration already so that's the other thing is like a lot of the other animals i would assume are reproductively ready besides like their poor health at the current state while improving health but those other animals are like twice the size i was like wow like there's just so much to learn about them still i think that's pretty cool well and that's sort of the theme with a lot of reptiles that we keep in captivity who knows how long they live for who knows if we optimize their health and their nutrition and their habitat to how well they'll do so so let's shift over to the shiny source because that's another incredibly interesting breeding project that you must be one of the only ones in canada doing this yeah so a very close friend of mine and in the canadian hobby who actually just left the country now move back home uh i would say i guess it's been i don't know maybe almost eight years ago he imported quite a few of them and um i i knew him like years before and uh as my friend manny york he he um he i guess like over time only had three of them there was a male and two females and when i when i'd hang out with him in vancouver when i lived there still like i'd see those animals like man like they are incredible i always thought they were amazing like you'd see them in facebook groups and people keeping them and like being vivid porous is also quite fascinating among other things and if i'm not mistaken like they're the only living member of their genus that like still exists like for shiny soros is just one species and the genus uh crocodilis so uh i at a certain point i told him i was like listen like i know i had no idea what to expect for the cost or anything i was like if there's ever a time and i mean no disrespect but there's every time that you decide because he was also very into dart frogs and all the different genera especially like the ofagas and some of the rare stuff because every time you decide that you don't want to keep these animals anymore please consider asking me if i would like to purchase them from you before you ask anyone else and like a few months later he's like hey man so remember that conversation you had and i was like wow like i couldn't believe it so yeah we worked out a deal and everything and so the thing is yes you mentioned they're so rare um he got them i don't know it must have been like maybe two or three years before they were listed to sighties one which isn't necessary but unfortunate it makes it so hard to get more or anything right um so um yeah so they're some of the only ones in the country but yeah so he we worked it out that uh yeah and i purchased the animals from him and um zoo med also was very intrigued and like i i'm close friends of the hannes hotek he's the i guess the canadian representative for zoo med and uh they worked out a collaboration they were really wanting to help some point like me setting them up so a few months before bringing them in i set up like a large paladarium enclosure for them my goal eventually was to house them individually but i really didn't know anything about how they behaved so i'll explain ford like um and yeah so they they came in and um they were doing all right i like i think they were a little on the lean side so right away i like i received them a year ago now i think it's almost been a year that i've had them maybe early july or end of this month would have been a year that i've had them uh i was thinking okay well like yeah we'll see how they do for now and they settled in slowly started to learn about how they behave and they're very i don't say they're lethargic animals but they don't do a whole lot of much like they just kind of sit around and bask sometimes or they're always in the water with just their head poking out and then food comes into the picture and they're very animated and active and they want to eat but otherwise like they're very s they just they rest a lot throughout the day so that was one of the reasons why i was like okay so do i really need to i mean the enclosure when you see it like it is it's a 36 by 18 by 36 zoo med with the front opening doors so i've had people be like oh you should keep them in a bigger enclosure and i mean i may very well decide to separate each of them but like for the while they weren't being aggressive they were just getting along and i'd feed them all and and yeah but they were very shy at first and over time they became more tolerant and it's sort of the similar process i do with a lot of the other animals i'll i'll encourage them to like walk onto my palm for something like they love nightcrawlers it's one of their favorite things to eat and you offer them those they don't care where they have to go they'll follow you into it it's actually how i coax them into the containers to take from the vet i don't like to grab them and stress them so i just hold the container open and drop a night caller and they'll just swim up climb into the container just tilt it up put the lid on like stress-free experience you got food out of it right so um and yeah so i i decided not to cool the animals because part of their natural i guess process in the wild for their biology and they undergo like a i don't know if it's a proper brewmation or if it's almost more of like a hibernation actually like they really they they bury themselves under like moss and leaves and or maybe even soil as well and they they go dormant for like the whole winter in china and vietnam where they're from other different localities and it's for quite a few months and then they come out of this with the warming weather and it's then when they usually become reproductively active and then um the females gestation period again they're they're vivid pores so they give birth to live young in the water it usually lasts about nine months on average from what i've read hope i'm not making any mistakes here but yes that is what i've read uh and there's a few shiny soros facebook groups that have been very helpful as far as like the community goes of keepers but what's also interesting is sometimes the females gestation can last through that hibernation period so there are cases where a female will be carrying offspring through the winter and give birth in the spring so last year because of the animals being a bit underweight i decided that i would hold off on considering any type of dormancy because i was like a little scared of like doing that with animals that maybe aren't already in like prime weight and it really didn't have any adverse effect on them um i think maybe they almost underwent a little bit of it regardless because this is a basement unit and although i kept most of the temperatures consistent i think naturally there was a bit of like a dip um and yeah i think come spring i started noticing like the mail like i'd be in my living room or working at a desk or something and i'd hear some splashing and the mail was very actively chasing the females and i was like oh my gosh this is so cool like it's almost like you have this nervous feeling because you know how rare the animals are and i want to be clear that like i'm not i'm not someone who cares about like oh i want to have all the rare things it's not even that like i just know that what a privilege or gift it is to be able to have these animals in my care so i feel an immense responsibility and like making sure that i breed them like there's two females in a male like this has to happen right um so like but i didn't have any anticipation is when i'd be able to get to that point so just seeing that male like clearly chasing around the females and once i walked down my hall way and he uh actually had a female pinned in like a position for copulation but like let her go and dove into the water like no um it was nice to see because i was like okay well clearly this is happening while i'm not watching so i was like okay well leave it and then a few months ago i uh i guess i should backtrack and say that like the the sexual dimorphism with the animals isn't always so obvious a lot of people will say like the males have a broader head and the coloration is usually much more vibrant on the males but i do have one female that's a bit large and does have some nice coloration so back last october we we went to dr brown to have the animals ultrasound to accurately sex them and he did see follicles in both females and the other one lacked them and possibly he also noticed the hemopenes so sorry now this year we decided to do follow-up ultrasound to see what was going on if anything was going on because there was um the hope that there was copulation occurring and what we found was very different it was very exciting like there was actually very large developed follicles and even like a separation between like the circular lining and something within so he mentioned that it would be really interesting to uh document this process and see how they develop because we're fairly confident that the animals are in fact i guess do i say gravid or yeah i think it's still gravid uh producing offspring so that's where we're at now and we want to kind of minimize the amount of stress they undergo because it really there was some concern from my audience they're like oh we'll just leave them alone don't do the ultrasounds but it's really it's such minimal stress for them like it's only every few months or so they were going to just do a gentle ultrasound and there there's minimal handling in the whole process anyway so and he also said like i wouldn't even request doing it unless it was safe for them so um but yeah so it's gonna be really exciting to see that's kind of where we're at like i don't want to jump the gun but very clearly something is going on in in terms of like um like they're not just follicles like there's development going on in them and we were very lucky to see through the footage that dr brown recorded with his assistant that that's happening so yeah well and i think it's important to document it even if there is some stress involved inducing some stress with the ultrasound it's it'd be so much better to have this documented clearly for you know future rounds of this and do you mind telling us how much you paid for them i don't mind yeah so i got very lucky um i would say like i think i i in the end i paid three thousand dollars for them for all three yeah and what would that realistic account yeah if you remove the friend discount what do you think it would have been i don't know because the thing is is like i want to say i see them go for around i could be exaggerating it might depend on the size and age but i usually see them go for 1 500 or 200 there's two to 200 2 uh usd in the states is what i seem to see and that's hard to say because like facebook doesn't really let you show that but like i've seen in a few like classifieds and things they're usually around like 1500 for a younger animal i think so really i don't even know they could have got like eight grand canadian for three it's quite possible but i mean again and i always tell him like how much i appreciate like he's such a good friend and i was blown away and i didn't want to take advantage i was like are you sure yeah so that's that's uh what we did and um yeah honestly i have it's just been crazy um but so so in the process i've been trying to connect with a few other keepers and out of respect i mean i don't know if they wanna i don't know if they want other people to know they have them i i don't know like i just i'm sure they'd be fine with it but i just won't say in case um i mean i know that there's uh stefan from the terrarium channel he's been on the podcast before and he has a video on them yeah i was just gonna say so but oh no but i meant in canada specifically oh i see gotcha so uh one i'm forgetting his last name cody and alberta i know he publicly posts them so it's fine to mention yeah he has at least a few and some of his locked up this year i don't know what the situation is with that and then there's one other individual i know that has a few animals that's kind of closer to me geographically here speaking so i'm like in communication with everyone i know that has them because i want to make sure that if they're going to reproduce any that we're going to be swapping some animals because like you need to work together and it really sucks though because i i've i know very little about importing and exporting cities animals um i've heard it's not like completely impossible to import cites one animal but of course it'd be like incredibly challenging and i i don't know if it's even something i can learn about or an option i can exercise but yeah i mean i guess you just kind of worry about inbreeding and things like that right i mean at the very least i'm fairly confident my two females in the mail are unrelated and that's great um but yeah this we're working with a small gene pool in canada it sounds like i think to as far as i know there's maybe nine in the country including mine it's not terrible yeah with nine you could still do some pretty significant swapping absolutely yeah so well i think you guys are going about it the right way then yeah i hope so and again i don't want to jump the gun like i really hope things are happening here like it really looks like it the one female is just like she's she's starting to swell and i don't know if you've seen photos of like uh female genie source when they're close to full term it's you feel so bad for them they're just gargantuan like really really large swollen uh animal and it's so fascinating just they're really cool animals ultimately i i have started like thinking about how i'm going to house the offspring because i've hope sorry mr system there we go um that was short it was like a five second mist yeah i have i have some uh very short cycles going on in some of the dart frog tanks but it's like every two hours because there's uh more ventilation uh in those enclosures it's those frogs and coat tanks so gotcha anyway sorry uh but yeah um yeah we have to just see how it goes i guess and uh yeah the whole documenting is part of the fun of that as well so yeah well oh now they're calling they like the rain the luca mouse well it's gonna be really interesting like like you said you're it's all in the channel so people can you know follow along with this project and i really do hope you have success even if you don't have success this round i'm sure you will so that will be awesome to follow along with so let's jump to i i see i know you have a pair of the varanas was it priscinus yes the emerald tree monitors and those are a pair right yes there you go the green trees uh the yeah they're a pair um i mean they're not together obviously because they're both like not even i don't know maybe not even half grown yet so but is that a project that eventually is on the horizon for you yeah yeah like i oh man i gotta tell you i don't know why i waited so long to start keeping varanas they're just sorry about those that's so funny because they don't even make that much noise most of the time they're probably telling people to hear from gotta get in on them right yeah um yeah they are just phenomenal animals like they have so much personality and they're so intelligent and inquisitive i was really like why did i wait this long and so um last year in april is when i approached brandon of canadian cold blood and i got my first animal she's like a very young neonate at the time like i think he always wants to wait till they're at least a month or more old so she was at least that old and unsexed animal so i raised that and that's the one i call sabzi on my channel sabzi um and i just fell in love man like at first it was a bit stressful learning about the shyness and everything and uh working with that and um i i put a lot of emphasis because there's a few people in europe i know there's a what's her last name roman in switzerland she's on instagram and a few other places and she always posts these really exciting videos of her interacting with her priscinus and she's using like different dog toys and things and i've given her credit in my videos that i need to do that with mine like this is so cool and especially you would know like with varanas they're such intelligent animals you really want to offer that form of a enrichment like i think every reptile as a standard should have enrichment but especially animals like that so it's like oh well part of that process is going to be conditioning the animal to be tolerant of handling and everything so i really got into that and i don't know if you've seen on the channel like over time they actually really became so comfortable with me i take her out like if i walk into the room she's like oh you're there and like wants to come out right away throw her up and she climbs on my shoulders chills and moves around and is always eagerly waiting for food and treats and i've had different like toys and puzzles for her and i have a few others that i'd like to use for video and i just bought a clicker now i'm wanting to see if i can target train her we'll see how that goes i bet you'll have no problem with that yeah i'm really hoping it'll be something i can do on the channel i i only worried a little bit because it's not something i did initially so it's something i really want to do now going forward just because the animal is getting larger and i have had the odd time where she misses a cricket and grabs my finger and it's to no fault of her own and she realizes quickly that it's not food let's go but like there's still a bit of a consequence involving some blood if when it happens so i'm like okay well for smaller things definitely at least it'd be good to implement some target training so yeah we'll see how that goes but yeah i again it comes into like what we discussed with breeding and stuff was like man if there was a species i want to breed it's the green tree monitors like they're so cool so i know for some time i was like well do i want to do that or do i maybe want to try having like one of them a cray or something like the blue trees because they're also so beautiful and incredible right um but no i was like no i think i'd rather i'd rather dedicate that space it would take to having two of the same species and and be able to reproduce them and and raise some of the offspring and really implement those same um steps i took to taming them right because it was just so rewarding and it would be so great for whoever would bring those animals to their home right hopefully it would uh translate and help for them and their experience keeping their animals well yeah i think you'd like the intel every time i've talked to somebody who's got into monitors late after they've been keeping other reptiles they're just like i can't believe this species it's just unbelievable the way they behave they're so smart and and you know one of my friends lori torini i'm not sure if you're familiar with her but she has she does lots of snake training and she target trains all of her snakes and even snakes that are late in life that she's acquired somehow she's able to target train them and it's really incredible so i think a monitor you would have literally no problem with that i mean they're like parrots right yeah well no for sure i know it's possible like i even have seen there was an animal at the university of guelph that was target trained too and i've seen it on videos and other folks have done it i just worried about like the fact that i've gone so long without doing it but you're right i'm sure it'll be fairly straightforward or easy to do yeah yeah they're beautiful beautiful species and i think one of the enclosures is behind your shoulder there i wanted to ask about the the cork background what do you what is that is that just something that is that just like a cork board that you put pins in or no yeah so it's actually uh it's an insulation cork there's a company out in bc that does this and i think if people tune into this they're really going to want to know this because i for a while i wasn't sharing because i was working out like a collaboration with them and then they bailed on it so i was like why do i have to advertise with them but yeah there's a company based on bc i'll be happy to share with you um that like sells it it's insulation cork for on sound insulation but also like just for home insulation and they sell huge cases of it i guess and it's quite the investment to buy a whole thing because you can't just like buy one tile but it works so great i think a lot of people use this and so i actually just silicone it to the sides and the back and i use it in a few different enclosures as well not just the tree monitors but i like it because especially with the exoterras like um or any of the more commercial enclosures at the screen top it also just helps insulate a bit better like yeah you're still going to lose a bit of heat out the top but i do lay some of it down on the screen as well to hold in more heat between like spaces where the fixtures are um but yeah it gives them so much more surface area to climb and that's the important thing right so besides the branches everything crisscrossing in there unless this is where i keep my juvenile male basil he's in there right now but yeah it just looks natural and it's simple and you can't the animals can't get stuck behind it which sometimes happens with some of the like the foam backgrounds like especially the exoterra ones that come with it there's like those slots where animals go by yeah or the crickets yeah or the crickets yeah you can't so you can't lose anything so are you willing to say the name of that company or oh yeah ah shoot um if you forget it it's no problem i don't know honestly i kind of forget it but let me look it up while we're chatting here uh yeah i'll put it in the show notes for people for i'm sure it's not cost effective for americans but for canadians they yeah yeah yeah yeah a lot of enclosures let me find it i'm sure if i just write cork it'll come a therma cork therma cork yes thermal cork and the uh it's small planet supply is where i got it from i'll put that in the show notes for people if they're interested sounds good cool well let's uh let's jump onto the europlatus because i wanted to talk to you a little bit about that and then we'll finally wrap up with the with your youtube channel because we haven't talked about that yeah in there but for for the euro platis i think you have another i mean one of the amazing things that you've done on your your youtube channel is you've just done a great job documenting several different projects sort of concurrently and one of them is the europa europlaties obviously you mentioned them before you're doing some breeding but you i don't know if downgraded is the right word but you changed these setups and you sort of moved away from this bioactive breeding setup that you had so maybe you could talk about that whole process because it's really interesting i think we've hit on this on the podcast before bioactive is not always the gold standard and sometimes i think it becomes a buzz word and people just assume that if it's bioactive they're good to go but your experience i think highlights why that's not always the case sure so yeah i've been keeping the europlatas fantasticus it's crazy to think now i think it's almost been almost been eight years like i think i got my first ones in 2013 or 14. and uh it might have been 2014. so uh yeah like i mean initially i i kept them all bioactive and that definitely worked well for me with a large level of success like i can say that i've produced i guess it must be now at least 30 to 40 of the animals off and on and that also has a lot to do with like low years not owning many of them and then at some point owning more and things like that but definitely 40 or more i'd say that i've produced over the years and in the more recent years i've had i guess some issues with them just like animals would randomly drop and i don't want to make it seem like it was happening often it wasn't it would just be here and there but in some of the cases after doing a post-mortem um it wasn't really conclusive what the cause of it was or that maybe there was some sort of like infection one time it was because there was an issue with an animal's ovary when i did a postmortem and that was something that honestly it's like what do you call it not an act of god but like the problem is with an animal that small operating on them is really not an issue the way the veterinary medicine is in this day and age at this point like we don't really have that option because it's like you're basically operating on an insect like a glorified insect yeah you can't put them under they're so small so it was very unfortunate but yes i did lose one animal like that last year that's what the labs came back with and the whole report i have but i again with all the species i keep especially the ones that are less commonly represented in the hobby i am in close communication with anyone else who's having a large amount of success or success keeping them because it's not to say that i want to replicate what they're doing but at least like consolidate the information and like put it together and think about like how i can incorporate elements of it into what i'm doing to ensure that i'm on the right track funny thing about the fantasticus is that if you talk to a lot of the keepers that are breeding this species they themselves will also have random occurrences where seemingly healthy animals just drop and we know that generally speaking this species in particular and most of the genus really likes colder temperatures which i don't have any trouble achieving like they're all kept with their fans everything they're around like 72 and even before like the fans just help for air circulation but i'll get to that um so i um i noticed that i i did bring in a few imported animals last year to grow my like my i guess gene pool you could say and i also kept a few of the animals uh in small like quarantine bins like they're literally bins on paper towel with a few branches and fake plants and always a water dish of course and i noticed that none of the problems i was having were coming from the animals they were housed that way now that could have been a coincidence the thing that really sparked the no it's not something is up for me was that i once found a female in the bioactive enclosure on the ground and her collar was all off and i know like i've been keeping the ammo so long you just know never mind being on the floor like sometimes the color is a certain way it's like a lot of faded color but then there's just like this intensity and usually the the the center of the tail like kind of almost like the tendril of a leaf will look kind of enlarged and swollen you just know the animal is like not doing good so the i the only thing i could think to do is take her out of that bioactive situation and move her into one of these sterile bins and i kid you not she somehow bounced back and i honestly thought this animal was not like gonna make it she bounced back over the span of a day or two and a lot of that was just not touching her or anything just leaving her be not even feeding her for those two days and she's thriving i have her she's fine so it could have been a coincidence i started to feel that it was an issue pertaining to ventilation and like fresh air flow and also maybe keeping the animals too human now i always say this all like again as my own experience because there's so much to consider is it more dry in this basement in canada like am i dealing with different conditions than someone in the states or in the uk or wherever like i can only share it and offer it as my own experience and i am very cautious to preach to my audience like hey don't i don't think that these animals should be kept bioactive that's not all what i'm saying i think a lot of people have immense success keeping the genus bioactive i would encourage people to do so um this has just been my experience i'm finding that they're doing really well this way and i'm not having any issues so i started this i guess endeavor to uh see it's not an experiment like it's based on some some factual evidence that suggests they're doing really well right it's not like let me see how they do not bioactive but i decided to switch them all to this different setup and they're doing really well like within the first day of moving them into the same exoterras with miss kings and misting cycles but now also computer fans and a systematic like laben um the second night i had them in there first of all i mean they weren't paired up before so it's kind of natural that might happen but i documented three pairs there were two copulating and one the male was exhibiting some tail waving and it's part of like their breeding ritual and then the next night there was a female in the lane bing and she laid some eggs so i was like come on i mean i'm very happy that it seems to be going well at least um yeah it's it's very interesting i think you nailed it with the the humidity and the ventilation and that can be major issues in bioactive setups especially when you're using something like exoterra where there is ventilation to the top but it's not like a screen cage where you have air moving through and if you don't have a fan coming through to cycle the air and i think that's where sometimes herpetoculture runs into trouble because people think you know like i'd already mentioned oh it's bioactive so i'm doing the best thing possible but you don't think about okay is the humidity off and so in in their in their natural habitat in madagascar are they kind of part of that sort of more dry forest area or were they kind of living so as far as i understand there their range is more on the east coast and it's higher elevation and it is cooler but from what i know based on literature it is the fact that they're actually in a more i think humid climate or at least that that sees a lot of rainfall because i think a lot of like the accumulation of i guess like weather systems are coming from the east towards the west and then you have like the whole west side of madagascar it's like very very dry i mean that's also due to deforestation and erosion and other things that are going on there but like most of the jungle like very lush parts of the country are on the east coast of what remains so i i don't know like i know that the whole country from what i understand experience some form of a dry season and i know that even when it comes to imports a lot of people will recommend waiting till the fall because based on their season the animals arrive in much better condition so that would kind of hint to me that they do experience at least some form of dry season i i don't want to again like insinuate anything but i've almost wondered if they should be kept similarly to a bronia if that makes sense so they still need a certain level of humidity like with fog or other things and and maybe constant supply of like water dripping here and there throughout the day but there is a lot of airflow and that can be a tricky thing to have these two elements that kind of contradict each other like you have your airflow but then you also require humidity especially for us in canada in the winter yeah it's really tough your air is so dry that you're gonna be pumping into the enclosure yeah and so i've kind of the way i felt is that they need to have constant access to water but that they shouldn't be constantly like wet like they're if you're gonna miss the foliage in the enclosure it should dry by the time the next misting cycle happens that um that they should also have like a good amount of airflow like i i just i've kind of again it's speculation at this point but i feel that maybe with the experience at least i'm having with my animals is that there's something maybe with good air flow so i have computer fans situated on every enclosure and i will be honest i've been having to tweak that process now because i had one animal maybe it was a coincidence just go into like a bad shed cycle and i was worried that maybe the fan like dried the enclosure too much despite the misting cycles but then i also know another female another enclosure shed and that she did just fine so i'm kind of like playing around with some of the settings and how i automate it with like timers and such how frequent should the fans be on constantly or like maybe for an hour or half an hour after the misting happens or something you know um so there's elements of it i'm still tweaking a bit but um yeah i just i i worry that the random droppings of like these animals just dying could be an element of a humidity issue but it's also important to realize like what representation do we have like a lot of these animals are dying maybe they're wild caught is something going wrong with that are they being treated properly because a lot of people also feel that sometimes you shouldn't treat them it's just less stressful with those and this is one of those animals in particular people will often recommend just go straight into a bioactive scenario or situation instead of being quarantined and sometimes maybe that is the case but i think at this point i'm like no like definitely with these ones i used to do it that way but now i always quarantine them first for quite a few months and make sure they're doing well and they definitely do well on the paper towel and everything and the way i had it looks minimal ventilation but the lids are cut out some mesh and cross drills on the side and it worked really well but yeah the other thing to consider with bioactive and sorry maybe you wanted to chime in before i get carried away or no no you can go for it go for it yeah i was just going to say like you also have to remember with bioactive and this is something i've even discussed with dr brown again is like sometimes like you can have uh different types of bacteria just hanging out in there that you don't want to have there and you have to consider that and i'm not bashing bioactive like in every case where i think it works and i can do it for my animals i want it there like i think it's more enriching but i have discussed on my channel that it's not always the easiest way to do it and it's not always less work i think there's a misconception that we we think that bioactive means oh yeah like it's self-sustaining i don't really have to do much maybe wipe the glass but like that's really not the case you're also maintaining your plants you really should be removing fecal material when you find it you shouldn't just leave it there um and yeah like it can be more tricky at times you do you have to really think about like the types of bacteria and things that are occurring there like they could be harmful in some scenarios or situations so it's just kind of yeah like we what you mentioned and have mentioned in the past it's uh it's not just that simple thing that like every animal would always do better in a bioactive scenario and it's also dependent on even individual animals i've seen some people that breed certain types of amphibian and for whatever reason they have some they do so well in bioactive and some they put in bioactive and they just like decline and they're like okay you're going back into the sanitary um very clean setup and they just do so much better that way so yeah it's definitely more complex it does take more work and it's not to say that a bioactive can't be better it's just a matter of trying to everybody i mean everybody's situation is different your climate is different the airflow the local humidity all of those things play into it and it can be very challenging as far as the fans go are you exhausting are you blowing the fans into the enclosures or is it just exhausting pulling air out i am blowing them in to the enclosures and i i ran out of fans so they just arrived now i have a few that i'm installing now to go cross so that it'll help uh with more air exchange and flow for what is coming into the enclosures because i mean i have lights and stuff above it too right now the t5s they have the arcadia six percent uvb's above them so i also want to make sure because those do emit some heat that that air is like hopefully cooled but also the room from the other air from the other parts of the room it's being pulled above that space so what's going down is not just like kind of stagnant warm air yeah and well a lot of these species are are coastal animals right i mean you're living on an island madagascar or even crested geckos you look at new caledonia it's it's windy there it's really weird it's always right right on the ocean and i think that fresh air is something that is very difficult to get in the hobby and i think fans are really going to become more popular i mean it's definitely a matter of like making sure that it's not on too long or like figuring out the exact amount right like you have to be careful with that but yeah i uh the fans i'm using one is the company there's something i buy off amazon and they their usb plug and they're so great like even on their highest setting it's very low and i have the same ones on my shinysaurus enclosure because i found that that enclosure would get very humid and even the glass would fog up a bit and i just i had for those like the way they come i think you can buy single ones but most of them that i buy there it's like two on one uh plug so i i think i bought that same is the switch like the high medium low like a toggle switch yeah i have one i have one of those fans yeah they're great yeah so the shinnies i have it set up that is like one blowing in one blowing out and uh that works really well but these ones is just in it's a really small enclosure too so i feel like even just having it in one corner like you're just gonna get it's gonna come down and out the top on the opposite side anyways right like yeah and so i don't want it sucking too much humidity out of the enclosure but yeah it's a working progress because even before like i kind of experimented before the animals went in like how much misting should be happening and if it wasn't if it was too much like the paper towel on the bottom stayed too wet too long and it could like create a bit of mold so i had to really like configure how i was gonna have it prior to the animals going into this setup but so far i've been very happy with how it's going and um it's also one of those things as rewarding as it is to have the animals in bioactive bavaria it's not for me like it's not worth the risk seeing that they're doing well like this like it's not i don't think the animals care so much you know like they don't care if they're on fake foliage or live foliage at least in this case so it's really for me if it's to enjoy the animal in a very bioactive situation like the reason people would do it besides the the aesthetic appeal is like for the animals benefit and if that's not a factor in the situation right now then i'm just happy to see them do well like this i i maybe would love to see about getting them back into a bioactive situation maybe it is really just the ventilation and i could set them all bioactive set them up bioactive and then have the fans and that would make all the difference but for now i'm going to do it like this and then we'll like see going forward you know yeah and you can always add live plants and not go bioactive just add potted small potted plants like there's so many layers in between going full bioactive and being fairly sterile that work as well it's true and that would also create like like site is as well for the animals to deposit their eggs so that's a good point exactly good suggestions well let's jump on we'll finish off with the youtube channel because you like i said the very beginning you've you've blasted through 100 000 subscribers you are like an og on youtube though your channel is not new you have some old videos up there so tell me about just the journey on youtube in general because i'm sure where you are now is not where you thought you would be when you started yeah so i mean i think so first of all i think yeah i started my channel in february 2009 i'm not mistaken so a while ago and um how old are you by the way are you i think you maybe are just a little bit younger than me i'm 29. oh okay are you born in 92 yeah okay so i'm born in 91 so just we're close so you started this in like grade 11 basically yeah exactly exactly yeah very good math and so uh yeah so i started grade 11. i mean prior to that i think it wasn't many months before that i i'm sorry what am i trying to say um like i think i i kind of came across youtube and funny enough like the first thing i wanted to do was like look up and see if someone posted videos of like pets and at the time man there was like there weren't very many channels i i think i didn't like i found some a few random uh a lot of them were children really which was interesting like i found i think i don't remember the channel name there's some uh british boy who was like showing his chameleon and a few other critters and it was kind of just like people just kind of yeah doing tours and documenting their pets like this is my crested gecko this is that and then there was brian and snake bites which was like super entertaining and interesting to see um and i think definitely like even since then he's been like one of the biggest channels and that was really cool and that really inspired me um there was a canadian hobbyist that went by i think her username was like caterpillar giraffe and she had a tegu do you know who that is i think i remember that because a lot of these things are just very small flashes in my memory and i can't pinpoint what they were yeah i remember the like the tag you like she had quite a large collection too yeah yeah she had red hair she'd go snowboarding she's kind of like feeling that blink 182 like green bay punk rock vibe back then she's like very no bs kind of attitude yes so i remember watching her videos i was like this is so cool like i could do something like this because i mean even at the time i was considering going into teaching that's like kind of a path i was considering taking academically and um i i was like this is such an interesting thing like now i'll be honest i had no goal of like being monetized or anything it was just like it just seemed like a really fun way to create a sense of like small community and just share like my pets because i really loved reptiles so i remember asking my mother if she'd plan near uh like so it was like a sony cyber shot or something like camera they're just like holy mackerel and you know i actually leave all my old videos up and they're public i don't know why i do that i mean no i do i i get a lot of young i guess youtube enthusiasts that are like considering starting their own channel they'll come and be like man like your videos are so good how do you do that i mean first of all it's so flattering i don't always think that that amazing but it's very flattering i say listen like don't be discouraged go back and watch my oldest videos and see how this started it's just it's a learning process there's so much growth that happens over time you just have to be consistent and follow like not to be cheesy but really like your dreams and your passion and you'll get there you'll refine the process you'll learn about editing and everything and so yeah that's the main reason i leave those videos there but yeah sorry so i uh yeah like i just started posting videos and there was really nothing to it like i'd i'd sometimes use i don't even know what it was it was like microsoft video or something like i'd put a cheat like movie maker yes that's exactly it sorry movie maker i had like a little title come up like bearded dragon like yeah it was so cheesy and like there was no method behind it like i wasn't i didn't have any understanding of what the algorithm is or anything like i was just sometimes my videos were two minutes sometimes they were five minutes i think at that time you couldn't exceed 10 or something like that or maybe that's still the case if you aren't monetized i don't know what it is now but um and yeah i just started posting videos i remember i got my first subscriber and i was like so excited it was so amazing like i think i still remember their no what was my name i don't know jacob hooper something like that i remember like i'll still never forget that was like their name and yeah just it was just like fun it was really fun to share and i continued with that for some time and then i think in going into school and such i had something happen where for whatever reason uh i remember i don't know how like it was back then but like i received an email from google offering me an opportunity to like monetize one of my videos and so that was like i don't know if that's how they did it then before like you just become a partner it was this was for talking 2010 right so so much has changed since then um but they monetized one of my videos and i remember a bunch of my friends were saying like oh we're gonna like watch it over and over and like click the ads to get you more views and stuff and money yeah yeah i was like guys don't do that like i'm 100 sure they're gonna like that's gonna be a problem and sure enough i think after like two days i got an email that i'm like blocked for monetization and i was just like devastated again it wasn't my goal but it was very discouraging because i was like what the heck like come on for those that don't know like google knows everything you cannot click on your own ads you can't get your family to do it they figure it out instantly yeah and again like this was friends and family that were thinking like to do that out of love for me you know like share as well intended but you just like sabotaged me and so um yeah like it really discouraged me i i still continued to post videos here and there but then after i got like in school and stuff i'd post like once a year randomly something cool happened like if i like i don't know found a turtle and relocated it because it was like in the middle of i remember i found a turtle like it looked like it was like really in bad condition and i just put in a pawn like i just make a video about that so like once a year twice a year i'd post a video just to keep it kind of something i did and again just kind of as a testament that i was doing it for me and not for like the monetization i think but then it had been so many years and i i guess i found a way to like contact google and i wrote to them like the situation or whatever and i guess maybe there's like in general a probation period that i didn't know about or whatever but they remonetized my accounts like oh cool so then i had a few videos kind of do very well or like suddenly gain some sort of viral attention from years before and i kind of saw the monetary potential from it i was like man i really do enjoy doing this so i should try and be a little more systematic about it and i'd post like some tutorials about different vivarium builds and things and saw the traction it got like man this is cool so i try to make it something more consistent to just supplement what i was doing on the side and um it was in more recent years like through like not even just like the networking i was doing with different youtubers but like the growth that i was experiencing with the channel i was like man this is just something really amazing so i was like well i'll keep doing it on the side i'm not gonna like jump in two feet or anything but um after a few years i think this is this is all happening between like 2015 and now i'd say i was like okay like this is legit like if i if only i was kind of at that tipping point where i was like okay could i consider stopping what i'm doing and trying to just like what would happen if i put all my focus and attention into doing this full time like i would love mods yeah were you working you were working going to school university what were you doing yeah so where do i start i mean so for for some time i was studying in university and i really did enjoy that but i guess like i i'll be honest i i definitely went through a period of like some pretty harsh mental health uh i guess challenges with like some pretty bad anxiety and a bit of depression and it was a really tough time for me i was kind of trying to find myself and i felt a bit discouraged and i ended up dropping out of school actually so i have a few years of education under my belt like through university of guelph is where i studied and uh even that like i at first i started off in environmental governance and then i studied a year in zoology and then yeah i dropped out after that and i mean it was it was a good experience but yeah like i i spent a few years kind of finding myself and through that process i kept taking courses online like actually took it through a few athabasca courses like i studied like primatology and a few other things that really interested me like behavioral primatology i believe it was and uh yeah like it was through that and even all the while i must say my anxiety was pretty bad um and i think a lot of the reason why for me and my experience with that was that i felt like i was comparing myself to friends and family that like were really finding their path where they knew what they wanted and were just like boom they went for it and they got it and for me i was like what is going on like i was so anxious about dropping out of school like what now like comparing myself to peers and really struggling but i did find a lot of self-worth i should say in like the content i was creating it gave me a sense of purpose and i really loved that i was reaching an audience and it was so touching to have so many people feel like so happy about what i was sharing and also even just the fact that there are a lot of individuals who suffer i guess for mental health challenges and then difficulties that have actually expressed through like comments that they really feel uplifted by the content and that's like very flattering it's not necessarily something i'm like thinking about and but it's just so touching and it feels great to know that that's the case it's funny like we're talking about this now but it's not something i've even opened up about on the channel to be honest um so i mean yeah i'm happy to share like if it helps and everything but um yeah so i i really must say that i would really feel that my my youtube channel is one of the things that really helped me um gain a sense of self-confidence and purpose um i i mean i always felt like good about myself so to speak but i had a lot of uncertainty and then feelings of fear i guess about the future and such and but like having that as something to really work on it and it gave me still helped me give or gain a sense of drive and purpose and then strive to like achieve something and pretty much he's zipping around in the back which is great because he's the one that's always shy but um and yeah so i guess like things really progress with that and then i should add that yeah so then eventually i did when i moved to vancouver again it's really learning about all my elements of the industry i actually was a manager at petsmart for a while okay so i saw that side of the industry as well and um that's what i was doing while doing like the youtube grind and networking and then it was through that period of time that i went to arizona and went to like the pet fest thing they had and it was really cool to meet all these other creators and really see the potential and like turning this into a career and like compare where i was at where they were at and see like the trajectory and if i kept doing things right and how it was going so it was right before covid hit that i decided at the end of 2019 i was like i'm gonna do this full time but i'm there a few things i have to do like one i decided to leave vancouver because i felt like financially would be a lot more feasible um just to like really cut my living expenses down and so i moved back to ontario which is where my family is and i set myself up here and then things became complicated with kovid but like at the same time i can work from home which is really wonderful and i've just yeah i've just been doing the grind since and um yeah sorry i don't know if that's just like a huge explanation but it's kind of led to where i'm at now and and i've just been so blessed and thankful that um for the receptivity for my content and then truly humbled by my audience and i really really strive to build this like humble and educational uplifting experience through the content i put out so i should let you uh say something yeah no no that would that was fantastic that was great and i can very much relate to sort of that experience because for most of my life i was a competitive swimmer i saw him at a very high level until i was 24 that's when i retired from the sport and that left like a huge hole in my life that i didn't really expect you sort of identify with that person and then all of a sudden it's gone and there goes like my purpose my drive and everything it was just disappeared and like dylan the swimmer was now just dylan and it was like what what the hell is that i have no clue and so i know that exact that sort of deep anxiety that can throw you into especially if you're doing something and i was just having a conversation the other day about this youtube especially reptile youtube is a pretty weird thing for the regular person right they're like hey what are you doing in your spare time you're like i make videos about lizards they're like thumbs up man good job hopefully that works out for you and i know exactly that feeling where you're like you put so much work into it and you all your friends are becoming lawyers and doctors and you're like i'm doing this i'm going to try to see if this works and it can be pretty uncomfortable especially at the beginning when you're literally doing it for free essentially and even if you're just making a little bit of money it's it's pretty it's a it is a tough grind to get through that sort of identity crisis in some ways yeah no for sure and i mean like i think to be more clear part of the like feeling lost was not so much to do with the youtube like that was something that like kind of helped me have a sense of purpose but it was more so that i didn't know what i wanted to do next but at the same time i was still doing this to like because i loved it and it was sort of like a level-headed thing but i i didn't feel like it was really an option i always saw it as just like a fun side gig hustle thing like i mean it wasn't that makes it sound like i was trying to make money out of it but no like it was just like the side thing and it was sure it was cool that it had a bit of money to be gained from it but it was like just like a hobby almost or an expression of the hobby that i was doing anyways with my animals and everything um but it was it was the the sense of purpose i gained from all of it was that was when i actually decided to turn that into like the job i have and it and it's such a blessed position to be in because don't get me wrong like i work so hard i mean my parents always like dude like they don't say dude but like you work like you work like seven days a week and i do often have to do that and i it's a time management thing too but for example like i i sometimes have sponsorships that they want the video a certain day so i'm like okay well i did just post friday but i have to post today because that's when they need the video for and things like that right so sometimes it's planning it all but if you have a bunch of other videos you're working out for your normal upload schedule like yeah there's different things and then also to keep in mind that our subject material or they're living beings so you're not just like twice a week like let me record this and that's it like all the while you're maintaining and caring for your animals so that is part of the job and the experience too like it's the most important job too like i always say like uh if if i let's say skip out on a day for like cleaning or something i'm gonna have to postpone my video or whatever right like i won't i won't jeopardize the animals for any reason to post the video that never becomes more important and i'm very appreciative that my audience is very understanding about it like there's a little joke sometimes that like when i fall off the upload schedule they're like okay just say that monday or tuesday's video is coming out wednesday because like i didn't post on friday and they're like it's gonna backtrack you but well i'll be like no no and i try to like get back on but things like that happen too but yeah it's a it's a hard grind and i'm sure you know yourself like it is a lot of work to organize and put together the videos and everything so yeah absolutely so was there like what was the moment where you were like i'm gonna try to do this was there something specific that happened or was it just kind of covered and or was it like a story behind that so everything that led to me making my decision to do it as a courier was before covet funny enough but like okay so you know i did mention that i considered teaching for a while and that was something that i changed my mind about like before even getting into the program that i got into but i still always loved like teaching and i do in the past i've done a lot of volunteer service with like youth and other things and just like there's like a junior youth spiritual empowerment program that i did for a while like community service and different things like that so i love elements of teaching and empowering others and and so i thought it was really cool that this platform was creating a space to create a sense of community and positivity in the hobby and i think that's something we need too but then like i said i was gonna just continue doing it as sort of a hobby experience or like a past time but when i started seeing the like monetization results and i started having a few companies approach me with sponsorship opportunities like i could really be more systematic about this and if i was able or if i was in a situation where i could allocate most of my time to doing it really grinding hard i could get it to that point so i decided that moving back i would dedicate myself or give myself a year to really just do this full time work hard on it like have no distractions and see where i'd be at at the end of that year and the results were great i mean overall it's definitely kind of scary for the first few months and i will say there's so many things that i would have liked to have done that i couldn't do just with traveling and i really wanted to be able to um show other members of our canadian hobby like community and what they do right and how they express and and partake in their passion and love for these animals and i got to show a glimpse of what my goal is with that aspect through the tour i did at canadian cold bloods i don't know if you had a chance to see that but it's really fun and the results are great too for me like as if career-wise like that video would perform so well but then we went into lockdown after that and i didn't get to like and so i would love the opportunity to be able to highlight more hobbyists whether they're in canada or abroad and um yeah so i mean like yeah it's it's it's it's just been that that whole process was kind of interesting but still i feel like the channel was doing well enough that i was like okay well no yeah this is what i'm doing now it was so great it's such an honor to be able to do what you love as a career and it's an interesting angle too because you usually think most people that are in a hobby as a career they're like breeders or something like that or they work in a zoo or vets and there's kind of an interesting uh way of doing that right so yeah absolutely well and it's you know if you ask any 12 year old right now what their dream job is they're going to say youtuber you know so it kind of has that connotation but people don't realize how much work it is and so i'm so happy that it's working out so well for you especially these last few years youtube has really blown up especially on the reptile side there's been some big names that have popped up so yeah it's great having a channel like yours who is very you know has a good substance about it and you're doing things properly and i think look we talked about earlier you're a great role model for the hobby as well you know doing the vet visits and documenting things properly and being honest and one of the best best things you do is like you had mentioned several times is you are not giving out written in stone instruction you're talking about your experience and really just sharing the hobby with the world which is different than saying here's the exact care sheet here's how you must do things and that's where pet tubers run into trouble i think is they become too you know they speak in into concrete terms and i think you tend to avoid that yeah i i definitely think i do and it's not to avoid like drama or anything it's just again to make sure that it's coming from a position of like like we're all equal and and we're like sure i might have more experience than some people but i also think that someone who has less experience whether it's like a timeline or whatever might come about or through their own experience of keeping an m i learned something that i didn't know about and so one of the other things that's cool about that sense of community is that i can learn a lot from my own audience and that's something i've expressed to them that's something dazzle's really going to town yeah it's ripping around there yeah it's so good to see um but uh yeah like i mean i've shared with my audience that they've taught me a lot too and that's something that's also super rewarding about elite um so yeah i think when you navigate through that whole world with a sense of as much like humid humility as possible and really express your passion that way you can't really go wrong because you're still striving to do all the right things and i always use like the spider-man analogy that you know with the great power comes great responsibility it really is there whether i'm expressing myself as like my what i do myself and not like this is how it has to be there's still that element of responsibility regardless like even if 10 000 people 5 000 people watch that video my goodness you don't want to tell people like this is what i'm doing and it's like totally wrong right like and but you also have to understand from their position you should independently investigate the truth or whatever it is yourself too right so there's there's two sides to that as well for sure but um yeah i think when you go about it that way it just it is a lot more healthy i think in general yeah i i completely agree and so i do definitely appreciate that about the way you display and present the information thanks so much we've had a wonderful conversation here i've really enjoyed this is there anything that we didn't touch on that you wanted to mention or did we pretty much hit everything i mean i think we hit a lot of it like i i did want to quickly add and i know i apologize you know you're asking me questions and i just go on a whole thing that's why we have a podcast sure i hope i'm giving you enough time to add your comments but thank you uh i i wanted to say like i mean just to add like yeah i think going forward with the channel like i i am really hoping that um you know pandemic and covid and like relating or pretty uh permitting i should say that uh yeah i'll be able to do a lot more i guess content that involves traveling around and showing other hobbies experience because again like the emphasis on community building is so important and i know that it's a very intimate thing and maybe also with businesses like not everyone wants to show what they're doing but for those that do i think it really helps to build a sense of community and show that we are there and present and growing because with a lot of the things going on with the hobby being under attack i think it would be really helpful to grow the visual like experience and representation of what it is we're doing and show it as like a wholesome and really educational and encouraging enriching thing you know so people see the really positive side i really it's sad that there's so many popular documentaries and other things that show this negative side of specialty pets but yeah like just to have a platform and to be able to use it for important things and you know it's a financial constraint but i hope that as things progress i'll be able to do more traveling and maybe even show some of the conservation endeavors that are going on where some of these animals are from like my dream would be to visit madagascar and and somehow use my puff excuse me my platform to uh maybe showcase some of the initiatives that are going on there for reforestation and conservation and and it might be beneficial to show how the animals are kept in the wild those are dreams i have so we'll see what happens in the future but like i'm happy that i've been able to do this much good it's very humbling just from being stuck in my reptile room during the pandemic it's already really encouraging so i'm eager to share with the world more cool things as things get better with that yeah well i think the idea of presenting the image of herbert culture to the mainstream public as a or to the non-reptile keeping public as this dynamic group of people who's worried about conservation and concerned about proper breeding and ethical keeping and high standards of welfare and all these things is what we need more of we like you already said there's plenty of bad press out there there's even members within her culture that give bad press by just the way they keep and the way that's out there so the more people we can have like yourself the better and i think that is what will save reptile keeping in general and i love that you have this vision because i think you'll go after and i think you're going to do it so there's some seriously great future plans that you have and looking forward to that can you let everybody know if they don't already know where you can be found online uh yeah for sure and thank you again dylan it's really a pleasure uh yeah so you guys can obviously find me at a reptiliatis on not only youtube but instagram facebook i'm also on twitter but i'll be honest i don't post that much uh and then also tick tock so awesome well down thank you so much for this i love this conversation i know listeners will enjoy it as well so thank you very much thank you so much it's been such a pleasure to be a guest on your channel all right that is the end of that episode diane thank you so much for being so generous with all your time we i think we spent like probably another hour talking after the podcast so i really appreciate that as well listeners i'm sure you enjoyed that podcast but if you did make sure you let us know in the youtube comments or come comment on the post on instagram as well if you're listening to this on audio we would really appreciate that and please feel free to share it on instagram facebook and whatnot that always helps find more eyes and ears to listen and watch the show again head to animals at home network dot com if you're looking for more information on this episode or any other episode that you can find on the animals at home network thank you very much to customreptilehabitats.com for sponsoring this episode of the podcast again affiliate links are both in the show notes as well as the youtube description and finally you can find a link to the patreon account on both the show notes and the youtube description if you want to join us there and i think that's it thank you guys so much for listening this week and i will catch you next week

Channel: Animals at Home

Views: 133,564

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Id: SBHvwY8a4cg

Length: 115min 37sec (6937 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 04 2021