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I'm so sorry for your loss! I am glad you enjoyed the video though.

Thanks for the suggestion! We did end up naming her Gwendolyn and she is a mom for us. She was paired with our scaleless boy Bacchas and produced 16 beautiful babies. :-D

I would love to do tons of unboxing videos! :-P Unfortunately they are expensive (since you have to buy an animal to unbox). We do have a couple coming up soon. If you really want more you can join my Patreon to help there be even more this fall and winter. :-D

I will have to watch the video to match some names. Some of the nameless have been named since then, but not all of them. :-P

I don't work with Eastern Indigos though I do think they are amazing. It isn't likely we will ever breed them though. I don't have any sarasinorum geckos yet, but they are on the list for the near future. Hopefully next year we should get some. My goal is to get all of the New Caledonian geckos. Currently we have crested geckos, gargoyle geckos, chahoua geckos, and Vieillardi's chameleon geckos. :-D

We love the fact that you can check on the Govee on the phone. So far we have had luck by misting around it or by pulling it out before misting. We do want to get some things more automated though and that will include misting systems and I haven't figured out what I will do then. Right now I use a Zoo Med one with probes in the chameleon enclosure where he has a mister and a fogger, but then it doesn't hook up to my phone and I end up staying up late with the excuse that I need to make sure his night time humidity is good. :-P

I do have some western (or plains if you prefer) hognose snakes. This year is the first year that we produced babies (our second year trying). We got three babies. They are super arctics and super adorable. I don't have a lot of cool things going on yet, but next year we will be pairing our albino anaconda male to a lemon ghost green het albino female and an arctic pos het female in addition to pairing the arctic shadow male to the arctic females. We are hoping for a total of 4 clutches next year. This year one female ate her clutch and I lost a lot of the second clutch due to struggling with proper humidity while they were incubating so we have plans to fix those issues. A third clutch was laid but it was all duds because the timing was off. :-P

That's a really hard one! Breeding is all about exciting things happening and then a bunch of waiting before more exciting things happen. The colubrid season is almost wrapped up. We are waiting on one clutch of 10 corn snake eggs to hatch and one clutch of 2 Halloween milksnake eggs to hatch. My favorite snake species that we currently work with is corn snakes with the California red sided garter snakes being a close second. The garters won't breed till 2026 though so I don't know if we can count them as a breeding project yet. My favorite geckos to work with are all ones I haven't gotten breeding yet. :-P I really love the chahoua and the Vieillardi's chameleon geckos that we got this year even though neither have produced eggs for us yet. I also am really in love with the dwarf species of desert geckos we have picked up recently (Steudner's dwarf gecko- Tropiocolotes steundneri and dune geckos - Stenodactylus sthenodactylus). They are so much fun to watch, but we haven't had them long enough to get them breeding. Oh! And I can't forget how amazing the emerald tree skinks are even though they also have yet to produce for us. :-D

It's definitely a lot of practice and it still doesn't always work. :-P

I'm glad the video was helpful! :-D

I really love the emerald tree skinks, even the male who hasn't warmed up to us yet. It's cool to see him getting a little braver. He will sit out and let me talk to him some now. Cuban false chameleons are on my list too! Most of those are also wild caught, but I had the opportunity to hold some captive bred ones a couple of years ago and they are really cool. I haven't checked out the monkey tailed anoles and probably shouldn't. We are running out of space. :-P

@@danellescritters aww yeah just give them time and tlc. I have 2 female cuban tree frogs, they're only about 3 inches or so now and they'll double or more in size, so they're very timid right now but they're warming up quickly to me, and boy they are voracious eaters! A store near me, Reptile Island Rancho Cucamonga, is getting a few captive bred Cuban False Chameleons in today so I'm going to go check them out! They had a monkey tailed anole that we loved and would just chill in our hands and wrap his tail around our fingers, but we waited too long and he sold 🥺. I haven't been able to find any emeralds in person but I did find 1 website that offers captive bred for $99/ea, I just worry about them shipping in this heat wave right now. Love your channel, keep up the great work! 😁🙏

That's definitely a tough one. I would start by spending a lot of time by the terrarium talking. I know it sounds dumb, but they do get used to hearing us and seeing us and then nothing bad happening. Then I would open the enclosure and just hang out with your hand resting in there so that he gets used to it not chasing him. If you can it is also great to offer bugs on tongs (though it only works if he thinks bugs look tasty). It can be difficult to tame a lizard that is really afraid. These are the techniques we are using with our male emerald tree skink who is very afraid of us. He will now look at us though when in the beginning he would run as soon as he felt us coming near. It may also help to temporarily house them in something that is easier to get them out if you really want to work on handling. Then you don't have to chase them so much to scoop them up. Another option is to be happy with him the way he is and buy a second gecko (to house in a second enclosure). :-D

getting a tent/mesh to get them used to you is a good idea. i know sometimes people will just dedicate an entire room free of hazards or hideyholes to taming geckos

I'm glad you liked it! It is a great idea to take what you learn from lots of resources and figure out what works for you! I have been adjusting and changing things over the last couple of years of keeping isopods and I imagine that in another few years it will probably look different then it does today. :-D

Thanks for subscribing! That's awesome. I don't have any pod specific enclosures, but I do talk to a lot of people who set them up at shows. This past show a guy purchased rubber duckies from me that he was setting up in a display enclosure. I always thought zebras would probably be an excellent choice for a pod display since they are bolder than many of the other species. :-D

@danellescritters thanks so much for your advice! My Springtails arrived today so I need to get a move on! I love Rubber Duckies but had heard that they're very shy. I was offered some Dairy Cows but now I'm tempted by some Magic Potions...

This is something I am learning. I will probably end up with a number of cool species. I love that they like people and that many of them can be kept in groups and do well that way. I am fascinated with community reptiles. :-D

@@danellescritters particularly blue tongued skinks, for some reason.. They love humans

Lizard doggo subspecies 😂

I'm glad you liked the video. It sounds like you have a great variety of snakes and some very cool ones even though you can't have pythons or boas. I do think African house snakes are super cool and generally mellow. Your corn snake may grow into handling better. Out of all of ours, only one dislikes handling. I do think kingsnakes are known for eating (and musking). We have a pair of Halloween milksnakes that musk on us a lot so the fact that you have got your California kingsnake to relax is great. :-D

Thank you for the subscription and welcome! :-D

I was really surprised that so many of them are friendly! It makes me very excited to see what captive bred babies are like. I thought we may have eggs, but we haven't had babies pop up yet. Hopefully soon we will get our first captive bred little ones. :-D That being said, I love western hognose snakes as well. We have 7 of them and most of them are really friendly and several come forward when you open the enclosure to get out and explore. :-D

That's awesome! Mine are interested at getting out at about 10. Before that and they are like, "Hey...it's too early for this." They will readily come out most days till about 3 and then they are done for the day. They will happily accept bugs from 9am to 5pm though. :-P I'm looking forward to producing captive bred babies!

I would imagine that they will only get better as they become more and more available captive bred and we get farther from wild caught stock. :-D They are really cool though and I'm glad you enjoyed the video. I am definitely looking forward to some adorable little babies. :-D

I make my own "roach chow" and I feed it to my isopods as well. You can find commercial products that would do the same thing. The powder is greenish because it has some algae powder in it to help boost nutrition of my critters. :-D

Unfortunately there isn't a good way to tell age. The geckos grow a hugely different rates. I do think there is a genetic component and then there is simply how good they eat. I have geckos that are 3 months and are great eaters and are the same size as some that are 6 to 8 months. In my experience, crested geckos can get to adult size in about 18 months if they eat well or they can take as long as 3 years if they weren't great eaters when they were young.

@@danellescritters ok, thanks for the help!

They have been a lot of fun to watch! I am hoping I have both genders, but will probably track down a few more this fall to make sure we can get babies next year. :-D

Morph Market is a cool marketplace for purchasing reptiles from. It is very popular in the US. I believe it is also pretty big in Canada, some places in Europe, and in South Africa? You should definitely check it out and see if they have things that are available in your area. :-D

Thanks! I appreciate your subscription and taking the time to comment!

Filming with animals is always interesting! I often pick out those that are calmer and then they decide that since they are on camera they are going to be crazier. :-P

Thanks for subscribing and for taking the time to comment. :-D I have lots more videos coming including some more on isopods!

I'm glad you found it helpful! Congratulations on your new family member! It's always nice when they are already a bit calm (at least for me). Some of them can be wild and a challenge. Of course, I found with the recording of this video that even the calmest one might be crazy if you try and make a video with it. :-P

They are a lot of fun and way softer to hold than I ever imagined. I do have a crested gecko playlist and will be continuing to add content! If you have any questions feel free to reach out and ask. :-D

@@danellescritters thanks so much!

Thanks for the list! It is quite a long one. :-D Definitely a lot of cool things I can be making videos about.

I dig it though I definitely need to double check and make sure it is a he. I'm still new to sexing and not super confident in it. :-D All 4 of last year's holdback are amazing!

Thank you! I am working hard on better scheduling and systems for everything so I will hopefully get it all under control and moving forward. :-D

@@danellescritters You got this!!!

Water bowls are definitely important! So you want the humidity to dry out a bit to make sure you aren't growing bacteria and fungus, but in a bioactive enclosure the clean up crew, as long as it is healthy, is going to also work on keeping bad bacteria in check and they are going to consume the fungus. That is part of its beauty. I tuck a bunch of moss around my water dish and then over flow the water dish (or dump the water dish into the moss when I'm cleaning it) and that gives the isopods and springtails and area that is always moist for them. It can also be really helpful to have your clean up crew in the set up enclosure for a couple of months before adding your animal. You then supplementally feed them, but then their population grows enough to handle the waste from the animal and the plants get settled before the animal is in there. I have a hard time doing that and am lucky enough that I can add more isopods and springtails if needed because of all my colonies, but it is a good practice! :-D

I get the appeal of community tanks and have sought out a number of species that are thought to be communal (happier living together than apart). Crested geckos are considered solitary animals and it really isn't recommended to keep them in a community setting. It can also be a complicated thing to answer though. It sounds like you are doing a good job at making sure it is going well (something that needs to be done whenever animals are kept together) and one reason to just say no to communally keeping animals that don't always do well in that circumstances is that many people who try it don't do a good job making sure there are plenty of resources and that everyone's needs are being met. I have heard of a number of people who have accidentally had a crested gecko die in their care because they didn't realize that it was being bullied by the other so bad it wasn't eating or because one crested gecko harmed the other. In general, it isn't a practice that I recommend, but if you are going to do it then you should do it the way that you are (providing plenty of resources to reduce competition, monitoring everyone closely, and being prepared to separate them if something should go wrong).

@@danellescritters thank you for your comment, think i have gotten lucky up to now, have found with weighing them each week that there are surton waits they seem to hold at for upto three week then back on it on, they have all seem to have done this, i am keeping the temps on more of the high side, he has been mating, instead of taking him out and then being unsure if the females will want him back or not, my current plan that is they all keep getting on is to lower the temps to trick the male to stop breeding, i have read males can stress females out if he it trying too much, but with there being five i think, think that should not be a problem, i do plan to keep checking them every week and always keep a good eye on them, we love the little correctors, but if i found any to be loosing wait or think it was being bullied as much as i like to keep them together, i would 100% slip them, hopfully they stay as they are, i just turned the light on then to see what they was upto and some was down looking for food, so fed them, they eat next to each other, it might be because we have had them from babies, the male was like six weeks old then we got thee more, then two week got another two, the male was off my brother and the others was from the same seller, so the male is not related, i know i was a little crazy to to what i have, but have spare tanks that can be made ready if need, again than kyou

Morphs with crested geckos can be a bit tricky. If it has patterning along its sides and its legs it is called a harlequin. Most of our geckos are harlequins to some degree. If the two rows of raised scales along its back are highlighted either completely down its back to connect just above its tail then it is a pinstripe. Many of ours are pinstripe (or partial pinstripes meaning those lines have a break in them). You can have a pinstripe harlequin (or those characteristics can be separate). You can also post in a number of crested gecko groups on Facebook and get some opinions on your specific gecko. Hope that helps! :-D

It's fun watching them run for their food. :-D

Thank you! We are pretty excited though not all of them look amazing today. Hopefully we still get a bunch of pretty babies. We should be having corn snakes hatch here in the next week or two as well!

Lilly whites are definitely cool crested geckos. We have a really pretty boy we bought last fall who is taking his time at growing. Then this past weekend we got two lilly whites to add to our group! Hopefully we will have some amazing lilly white stuff in the future. :-D

I have gone into shows with no cards and no money for that exact reason. As a seller I'm not sure I want to say, "Don't bring your cards" since I obviously want people to buy stuff. :-P But it is a valuable tip. This last show we did someone left, went blueberry picking, and then came back and bought a ball python from us.

That's great! Congratulations on the new snake. We love meeting all the people and teaching at the shows. :-D

Sorry this is such a late reply, it has been crazy around here lately. I would spend a lot of time near his enclosure. We tend to open the doors and talk with our scared critters. Place our hands in there, but don't move them around and don't make them feel chased. This helps them get used to us in general. There are people who think you should wake them up cause they are less likely to be on the move and some that think you should wait till they are already awake and active. I recommend trying both and seeing if your gecko seems to do better at one time over another. While I do think there is a lot of advantage to the general nature of getting them used to you, I do think you should still be forcing it if you want it to calm down quickly. Try and reach in and scoop from the side as quickly as possible without making it feel chased. I would then handle it over a table or a bin or box so that it is a little more contained if it does get away. Then I recommend hand feeding it. Some say your gecko will become dependent on the hand feeding, but I don't think a healthy gecko will starve itself if you hand feed it and that what people are seeing is that they are less likely to be hungry in their enclosure if they are eating out of it, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Hand feeding can give the gecko a positive interaction from what they felt was a terrifying interaction to begin with.

It's been hit or miss on the carrots for us. Some bins eat the heck out of them and some not so much. I also chop sweet potatoes for our dubia roach colony. They love it and I tossed sweet potato cubes and peas in with some of the isopods and some of them ate it all up and others ate just the peas. :-P

I whole heartedly agree, but there are people who are doing it. Cat waste is the worst though and there are so many parasites that can be in there. We don't clean any waste into our isopod bins so the only isos here eating waste are those that are part of a bioactive set up. We currently have a leopard gecko, a garter snake, a ball python, emerald tree skinks, and several species of geckos on bioactive though because they are awesome.

A lot of that will change with time as long as you consistently work with her. It can be really helpful to reach in and just let your hand hang out there and then wait for her to calm down so she can learn that your hand isn't scary. If she likes bugs offering them on tongs can be a great way to get her to come toward you rather than feeling like you are chasing her. And then giving it time is the most important factor because she has to learn that you aren't going to hurt her. :-D

Congratulations on your new gecko! Your humidity situation is definitely a reason that "blanket advice" is so hard to do. You definitely have to adapt it to what works for you, in your area, and your enclosure type. I'm glad that it sounds like you have figured out the humidity part. Some crested geckos just don't like bugs and others like certain bugs but not others. You can also try dipping the roach in the Pangea to see if he will eat it that way. :-D

It's true...Just because a gecko is less expensive doesn't mean that it wasn't properly cared for. However, an inexpensive gecko may very well be less cared for. Many people started breeding crested geckos thinking that they would be able to make good side money (or even a full time income from it) and have become burned out, tired, and overworked so when they are selling their geckos cheap it is possible that they might not be taking care of them. (I have talked with a few people who I believe that to be the case of at shows we have vended). I start my geckos at $75 and they are all cared for well whether they are going to be sold for two digits or three. As for pet store geckos...the general statements don't necessarily mean any one gecko at a pet store isn't healthy, but...the geckos bred for chain pet stores are mass produced and that makes it less likely that bad things were weeded out and that inbreeding was avoided. They are also less likely to be taken care of at the breeding facility (in a way that a person would care for them). There are some amazing pet store employees who love the animals and take amazing care of them, but some pet stores don't have that and then the gecko isn't cared for at the store. I'm very glad that your gecko is healthy and happy, but...I still don't recommend buying animals (geckos or otherwise) from chain pet stores. (I bought my chameleon from Petsmart so I am not immune to how adorable they can look...sadly he has not been a super healthy chameleon and the vet believes it is bad genetics because of his breeding...I still love him though and will do my best to keep him as healthy as I can for all of his days).

@@danellescritters do you have a link to one of the chain store suppliers? I’m really curious exactly where they get there animals from. Thanks

I'm so glad that you love your geckos. :-D There are definitely multiple ways to keep animals and keep them well. Personally, I think each person does need to evaluate humidity according to the enclosure types and their natural environment (someone in North Carolina will naturally have higher humidity than someone in Utah) to determine what works best for them, but I would still recommend misting at least occasionally. Many lizards don't like drinking out of water bowls and may be dehydrated if there are never water droplets to drink. I have even started misting my leopard geckos enclosure because I just learned that morning dew is one of their main sources of water and they are much more likely to be properly hydrated if they have water droplets available for drinking. When crested geckos were first kept it was common to feed them mushed or blended fruit with bugs or baby food with bugs and many of them weren't getting enough minerals and would in turn develop MBD. It's so sad that MBD is so prevelant in many commonly kept reptiles because people don't realize how important the supplementation is, but in crested geckos it isn't that common if people are feeding a high quality meal replacement powder because they are getting enough calcium and micronutrients to help them avoid that issue. So feeding a varied diet can be a good thing, but it needs to be done very carefully with a lot of research and it is probably better for most people to just stick with the prepared diet.

LOL...I will get right on that! Ironically some of those species are on my list. :-P Thanks for watching and commenting! :-D

@@danellescritters yeah I know bolens pythons cost like a brand new car....but there is no but oops 😂

Thanks! I do hope to grow the channel. I have gotten sooooo much better since I started and am positive it is only going to keep getting better. :-D

@@danellescritters some emerlad tree skink content would be fun! 🙂