Reptiles
Well as you probably noticed from the front page image I have some reptiles. I have always had a interest in Reptiles from a young age, I used to love going to the reptile enclosures at zoos and wildlife parks. About 3 months ago I went to my local Aqua shop which I have not been to in a very long time. I had already done research on Snake keeping and Lizard keeping about 6 years ago so had some idea on Habitat and general keeping. At the Aqua shop they had a very large area for reptiles which they didn’t used to keep many reptiles there. Someone I know used to work there but worked in the shop in Taunton as his role was updated. After seeing the reptiles I really wanted to get a Lizard as their collection of Lizards was quite good and seemed to be the main Reptile they were selling, I wrote down some of the Lizard and Gecko names to look them up…
Following the shop visit I looked up some of the names on the internet and had a look at some caresheets. I figured that I would most want to get a type of Gecko as they grow to upto about 15″ long. The best site for reptile discussion I found to be Reptile Forums UK. I decided that I wanted to go for one of the following (mouseover to see what type of Gecko they are):
I really liked the Day Gecko’s and Tokay Geckos the most, but reading up on the day Geckos they need a lot of humidity and a Forrest type of vivarium with a lot of plants. The Tokay geckos are extremely aggressive and are near impossible to handle, they are more of a show gecko and the males make a mating call which is like a dogs bark! The crested geckos are quite nice but they like medium temperatures and reading up on the net a lot of people have to get air conditioning for them over the summer due to high temperature and they don’t grow all that big. After I bought the geckos which I have now they had some White Lined Geckos in but I don’t think they look as nice, so I sort of changed my mind on them!
I was thinking about breading and did a lot of research on types of geckos to breed before hand, I found that the Fat Tailed Geckos are quite hard to breed as the hatchlings don’t feed very well. This left one type of gecko to go for which is the Leopard Gecko! Breeding them is pretty easy and there are loads of different morphs of them, you can mate different morphs to create other morphs and their genetics are very interesting and the other morphs are very nice, they look totally different. So I decided to go for two female Leopard Geckos…
As stated I knew someone that worked in the Aqua shop, although not the one in my town so I took a trip there on bank holiday Friday (6 weeks ago) to meet with him. He managed to get me some great deals on the vivarium and everything to go in it, I got the vivarium for half price and he even set it all up for me! I have two very beautiful female Leopard geckos which I have had for 5 weeks now! They are only just over 4 months old and are very cute. I am planning on breeding them some time next year, I am probably going to get a male nearer the time when I have setup another vivarium.
Next Reptiles:
If you ask anyone that keeps reptiles or has kept them for quite some time they will tell you it is extremely addictive! I am thinking about other types of geckos and lizards already. I have been reading up and am looking at one of the following two to be my next project (I am still researching this at the moment!):
The Rankins Dragon is part of the Bearded Dragon family but they don’t grow as big, they are really great Lizards, they are not nocturnal (like most Geckos are) and are friendly. The Chinese Cave Geckos are very sought after as they have very nice coloration, the only thing is that they are quite shy and don’t like being handled.
