You have a really cool collection! How do you feed your bandy bandys? Do you breed blind snakes to feed them? What size saltwater tanks were you considering? I might be able to give you a few suggestions. If your not already aware, considering how inland you are, it might be much more difficult (and expensive) to maintain a large reef tank, unless you’re willing to make semi regular trips to the beach. What exactly is a firehawk? Also how similar is the husbandry of a death adder to a standard Antaresia python?
Its good to see someone has knowledge on the bandie bandie, indeed we have to Inland Blind snake to be exact, in the past we've successfully got them to take pinkies but its something that we haven't been able to breed into it. ie ones who do and still do there offspring wont. there was suposidly a breeder from alice springs that had manage to get that consistently and was selling them but from everyone I have heard and spoken to he disappeared. We currently have a 2500l tank for stingrays and epaulettes and a additional 1000l for the port Jackson, and I have a little 150l reef tank in lounge. mainly hammer, one flower pot, few elegance, lobophylia. nothing to spectacular. we have a brackish bore on our farm which means on water changes we add in 1/4 of what would be needed for tap. still adds up but 100% worthwhile. flame hawkfish is what i meant, had the biggest derpmoment when i was writting. to my knowledge there is four recognized subspecies of that, plus two hotly disputed, unless there no longer disputed and now recognized. Depends on the subspecies your after they range from arid to tropical the common death adder is really basically same area as the childrens python. Aside from the usual temperature and hot and cold zones, tend to keep the moisture lower for the adder they're prone to scale rot in captivity people have the enclosures way to moist consistently, they also love a deeper substrate as they're a ambush predator they'll need to be able to bury themselves. childrens is a nocturnal snake and best kept in captivity on just newspaper (as most reptile keepers don't have much in the understanding of husbandry) and dispite been a terrestrial snake they climb really well so be sure to look in nooks and cranies in enclosures they really like moisture absorbing enclosures ie coco fibres kitty litter I have even seen successfully used. treat it similar to a bhp the death adder that is and youll be set, heat is quite important more so then many other species with them which is true with a bhp. Sizes, thus far. 10m x 4m x 2m, a little couple hundred behind the counter. and three spots that can have a maximum ( but most likely smaller ) 3m x 3m x entire room height
Didn’t realise you already had the aquariums! If you wouldn’t mind I would really appreciate photos of the shark and ray tanks.
That's not a problem I need to go to the main house in morning and will grab them then. If it's animal related and we can keep it legally someone in my family will want to get it. Mainly to breed or sell but they'll get it through at some point
Why on earth would you want to change the colours of any animal from it's natural colour?? That is what has happened to many bird species in captivity, and now it is often very difficult to see some in their natural colours. Why!!
End of the day it all comes down to money. People want it and breeders will do it. Need to look at America with there hets and morphs of ball pythons most people would not know what a ball python traditionally looks like. Bit they all know the various colour morphs. On a side note there also the most commonly kept reptile in the world. No difference to dogs cats anything people want certain traits and morphs and it's breed in with selective breeding. I suppose your against our orange carrots too? That was also selectively done. On a side note the colour morphs in the taipan is 100% possible in the wild. Would it happen in the wild extremely rare to not likely. As to with the most popular gouldian finch orange is the most desired colour here where I am, perfectly possible in the wild and does happen not to common as it's a rare recessive gene bread with a dominant gene, breeders know who to mix to get it. Takes years of effort and study to do these things and often the breeders know more then people "who studied it" But end of day it's literally all about money. No difference to a zoo they're showing off animals for people to pay for it. Breeders make colours for people to buy it
Just getting around to my tanks now this one is our test tank CO2 infused heavily planted. My partner and father are doing a report on it. Plant stocking in it in not sure, I know there is java fern, pink baby tears, java moss, some african water reed and that's all I know. Fish stocking is clown loach breeders in here. Gourami, rainbow shark. Albino plecko, Pakistani loach, chinease algae eater, head and tail light tetea, and one other can't think of name
Goldfish grow out tank/Breeders. They're is also another species in there but where at back cause just fed
Australia is really a country of elapids. ^^ I only keep three species of elapids at the moment (among them also a lovely female Inland taipan), but a bit more viperidae (11 species). Some of the Australian elapids you mention are hard to get legally in Europe. Being an Inland taipan fan myself, I'd truly appreciate to see that. You don't know a lot of reptile people, do you? Some of them are willing to sell a kidney (or two ^^) to get their hands on the latest, most obscure colour morph. And a lot of other animal fanciers aren't any different; blue merle French bulldogs are the latest craze these days. As if those poor dogs were not already riddled enough with hereditary issues. Or "designer dog" - i.e. how to make a lot of money out of mutts. @One eyed : I wish you the best of luck for your project. What I (and apparently others as well) miss is a conclusive overall concept; what are your USPs and themes to bring in customers (other than the aforementioned reptile geeks)? I've focused my exhibition on toxins and thus venomous and poisonous animals (and plants. And everything else toxic). Given your already existing collection and the fact that Oz is naturally full of toxic critters, maybe this might be an option for you as well?
You are correct- I have little knowledge of reptiles in captivity. Still does not making odd coloured, un-natural oddities, right. I have yet to hear a reasonable answer to this question; reptiles, birds, mammals etc all changed just because it is possible to do so and without any real justification.
Owww Bet she is beautiful too, not sure about yours but females are usually puppies and so chill and relaxed absolute wonder snakes to deal with. Nice what species have you got ? After a few years after opening I would love to try and bring in or source here some eye lash vipers as well as my favourite king cobra.. And a Boomslang have you seen dingo dinklemans yellow het Boomslang was breed with a good breeder in capetown with his help. Even a gaboon Viper, such thick danger noodles they are. I actually like that idea core focus and theme for us for many years could be toxins poisons and even misunderstood animals. Could theme it up and have sign boards on information about how the toxins work have some toxic plants on display (behind Glass). The ball is definitely rolling with that in my head now. Might have my deadly centre (where people would enter into park) and have other stuff around it ie outside animals. which is close to how we have planned and now is more themed. Hmm good stuff
@One eyed already gave you a reasonable answer; some people like morphs and are willing to pay for them. Furthermore, people have been breeding selectively for "oddities" since the earliest beginnings of animal husbandry and agriculture, leading to our current domestic animal breeds and plant cultivars. From an ethical point of view, this can be a mixed bag indeed, especially in regard to inbreeding depression and what the Germans quite fittingly call "Qualzuchten" (i.e. "agony breeds", such as highly brachycephalic dog breeds or "featherduster" budgies). However, I can also understand why people find certain morphs aesthetically pleasing, like the aforementioned amelanistic red-bellied black snake or leucistic monocled cobras. Doesn't mean that I have tp keep them, though. @One eyed Indeed, my female is a great joy to work with; I've added elements of behavioral enrichment to her husbandry, which she appears to appreciate. You can see a video of her using a wooden hamster maze on the Instagram and FB account of my exhibition. If you are willing to share a picture of your morph (also via PM, if you prefer), I'd be most delighted. You can find a list of the species I keep for my exhibition at the "How to found a zoo" thread or at Zootierliste if you search for "Welt der Gifte". As for elapids, next to the Inland taipan, I currently keep a cape cobra and a cape coral snake; I've donated the female Indochinese spitting cobra to my assistent. An adult male eastern gaboon viper is also among the animals I keep and is quite a crowd pleaser; his nickname is "Bud Spencer". Bothriechis schlegeli are quite easy to obtain in the European reptile trade; Atheris sp. and certain East & South African Bitis sp. are currently "the" thing, next to more obscure species such as Pseudocerastes urarachonides. Boomslangs can be viciously fast and quite a handful, but I understand why you like the coloration of some specimens. King cobras can be great display animals, but I have only seen very few institutions that offer them the husbandry they truly deserve. For most poisonous plants, you don't need to put them behind glass; just make sure that visitors keep their distance.
@One eyed As a fellow Australian (I don’t live in QLD so I wouldn’t be able to visit when it’s open) do you have any of a rarer, lesser known elapids like Bardick, De vis Banded Snake, Whipsnake species, burrowing snake species (like the Australian coral snake), Marsh Snake, Moon Snake, Grey Snake, Blue Bellied Black Snake, Crowned Snakes, Small Eyed Snake etc. Just interested to know.
My father had some yellow faced whip snakes from sunny coast. But we ended up selling the lot to a snake farm for them to internally breed. Plus I had some bad experiences with them. But we've been asking around and doing the paperwork more importantly for some of those mentioned snakes. Definitely keen on sourcing them, we've got hands on some but not all. But we will always be trying to add more. Alot of the issue isn't sourcing it's the antivenom requirements, been rare or less known usually harder to source. A close friend has a albino platinum eastern small eyed snake he caught in someone's back yard (snake catcher ) got paperwork to keep it and he is trying to breed from it, been begging him to let me add it on show. So yeah for sure will be trying hard to get the weirder more "rare" ones. Just predominately paperwork dependant.
Pakistani loach/Reticulated Loach Possibly the only not popular vertebrate I dislike because they can be very aggressive. Back when I used to have a fish tank (this was like 5 years ago) we had assortments of medium and small sized fish which got along really well. We only had three deaths in the first year and a half, our clown loach got white spot and Treatment didn’t work so it passed away and two other fish a sailfin molly and a Zebra Danio got stuck in a filter. Then we bought wave five of our fish which had an Eastern Rainbow fish, some silver tip tetras, a bolivan ram and a Pakistani loach. Every few weeks or so we noticed that fish kept disappearing from the tank, we checked the floor, checked the filter, checked the tank but no bodies at all. One by one we kept losing fish the total amount of casualties were 1 Angelfish 2 Silver/Bala Sharks 15 Assorted Tetras (black widow, silver tip, lemon) 1 Rainbow Fish 1 Bolivan Ram 1 Butterfly/ German Blue Ram 1 Electric Yellow 1 Baby Kirbensis 1 Black Ghost Knifefish 2 Cherry Barbs 8 Assorted Danios (Leopard, pearl and zebra) 3 or 4 Guppies 3 Bronze Corydoras 1 Peppered Corydoras 1 Dwarf Gourami Possibly more I can’t remember. And then we saw the culprit the loach attacked a rainbow fish double its size and ate it. We immediately removed it from the tank.
One suggestion: get a working with children check for yourself and all staff, so that you can market yourself to local primary schools, with visits themed around local wildlife and especially about how to respond to snakes found around the home. With a wildlife exhibitors license you could visit the schools yourself, but better yet they could come to you as an excursion.
You are 110% correct they're quite aggressive won't why away from starting on larger fish and actually quite destructive with planted aquariums. Not sure why they put it in there. Was in another tank and removed for basically same reason as you mentioned. It's quite funny but our local fish store sells alot of them dispite warning people they're like that. People must love the look of them here. I just hope they aren't releasing them into the bloody local streams
Really, I thought I just had an oddball, I thought most of the time they weren’t too bad but I just got an awful one. And I shudder the thought of swarms of them devouring everything in our native waters. It would be much worse in areas with small endangered Galaxias
