0:00:01.7: These guys are doing good. Let’s see if I can get bit. I don’t wanna get bit. Hey, guys. Look at her open her mouth. You’re not gonna bite me. Easy. [chuckle] Yeah, I don’t wanna get bit, I don’t want them to hurt themselves, but it’s a old pair of knight anoles.
0:01:44.1: There’s Sid being his normal grumpy self, and Thelma there in the foreground. I just got done swapping out a new yucca plant and a small fern down there for the houseplant that sadly passed away. It appears that my green thumb only applies to scaly things and not luscious greenery. I love live plants, I love naturalistic vivariums, [chuckle] it’s just I don’t have very good luck keeping those critters alive and healthy for some reason. I gotta do a little more research, put some more time and effort into it, it’s purely my fault.
0:02:29.0: So making their winter enclosure look a bit more habitable, a little bit more natural. I do plan on, after I bring them out for the spring 2021, I’m going to put some work into this hybrid enclosure. This is a customcages.com H3 hybrid enclosure. It is… Let me see if I can get my awesome little gimbal camera here to change on its own, it is 24 feet across the front, it’s 18 inches front to back, and it is 3 feet tall, it’s clear acrylic sides, sliding front doors, metal top, that’s a composite paneling. And I went ahead and I used black silicone to secure it to the aluminum frame, make sure no moisture gets in there.
0:03:27.1: But Sid and Thelma seem to be doing awesome in here. As soon as I get done chatting with you guys, I am gonna go ahead and replace bulbs out here. That is something I do around Christmas or New Year so that I do it the same time every year. I replace the bulbs annually ’cause they obviously spend a good four months outside, so the bulbs get about eight, nine months of burn time on ’em and then I replace ’em. I need to invest in a UVB meter, see if I need to start doing that a little bit sooner, but I also make sure I supplement frequently their food with calcium and D3 when they’re indoors, and I’ve never had any problems the several years I’ve been doing this.
0:04:15.4: So heating and lighting is provided by T5 high output fluorescent bulbs. Right now, I’m using the Zoo Med 5.0 UVB. I typically like to go with the 10.0 or the Arcadia 12.0, but they were hard to find for [chuckle] some reason this time when I went to go shopping, so I got the 5.0s. This dome right here is a ceramic heat emitter that is on a thermostat. These guys are out in my garage in a covered enclosure. I’ve shared that with you before. And so on a cold night, it does get cool out here, so the ceramic heat emitter will come on, and a basking heat lamp is provided by a mini halogen bulb. Since the enclosure is three feet tall, it’s a 50-watt bulb. If it was two feet, I would only use a 25-watt bulb. Those bad boys do put off some heat. [chuckle] Hey, buddy.
0:05:16.5: So if you’re gonna use these, I like ’em, just be careful with them, they do put off a lot of heat. 25 watts is sufficient for most terrarium applications, I would say, but I’ll see them basking midway down here. That’s how much heat it can put off, they can warm up and if they really need to warm up… Look at that dewlap, big pink beautiful dewlap. That’s why I love these guys. But anyway, that’s why I went with the 50-watt, it’s a three-foot tall enclosure.
0:05:44.7: So I just wanted to give you guys an update on this one enclosure. Sid and Thelma doing awesome, we’ll see if I can keep the fern [chuckle] and the yucca plant alive. Hopefully it’ll grow and I can take it outside for the spring, had to weigh it down a little bit with some rocks in the pot back here. These guys are doing good. Let’s see if I can get bit. I don’t wanna get bit. Hey guys. Look at her open her mouth. You’re not gonna bite me. Easy. [chuckle] Yeah, I don’t wanna get bit, I don’t want them to hurt themselves, but it’s a old pair of knight anoles. Let’s see, I got Sid in 2013 or ’14, and I got Thelma in 2014. Both were adults when I got them, so they are up there in age, at least eight years old a piece. No eggs from her for a couple of years now, but I always wanna check the… I checked the old dead plant that I threw out just to make sure she didn’t lay anything in there. Well, what are you guys doing? They definitely don’t like having this camera in their face. Good knight anoles, though.
0:07:12.4: Just a little update on this one enclosure for you guys on this weekend before Christmas, I hope your holiday shopping and merriments are all going well. I hope you stay in safe with what’s going on in the world today with the pandemic. Hopefully, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for that. But anyways, I say it every time, I need to do more videos, it’s a busy time of year, so I haven’t gotten around to doing it as much as I want to, but I do strive to at least update periodically for you guys, give you updates. If you have any questions, comments, anything you would like for me to try to focus on, don’t hesitate to reach out. A room tour will probably come beginning of the year, or I should say a collection tour, I got multiple rooms, beginning of the new year sometime. I definitely got to update you guys on the baby alligator, the snapping turtles are doing awesome, baby, they’re over a year old now, have grown, grown quite a bit. I’m gonna be figuring out a new enclosure for them soon, but anyways, that’s where we are on this fine Saturday before Christmas. I hope you guys are all doing well. So take care.
