If you don't have ZOO-LEVEL Habitats, Are you a Bad Keeper? | Chris Chaffin 

The answer for anyone starting out is don't ask questions online or pay attention to popular RU-vid heroes. You will be overwhelmed with misinformation. It's the land of the blind leading the even more blind.

I think that the gray area is the future. As nice as it would be to believe that science has reached the point where we understand everything, the truth of the matter is we are just starting to scratch the surface on understanding each individual species and the individual animals within the species. It is extremely dangerous to get in the mindset that we actually know what we're doing now because the people who develop that mindset on the techniques that are popular right now are the people who hang on to them for decades in the future even when new information comes out and shows otherwise. I spent about 25 years lurking because I wasn't in a position where I could keep my own animals, since actually finally being in a position where I felt comfortable to keep my own animals and applying scientific techniques to improving their care, I have introduced a lot of new concepts that have turned out to hold true across many other people trying those experiments out. I am not saying that I am something special here, I'm saying that there's a ton of room for furthering our understanding of these animals and we're just going to keep uncovering more the deeper we look. If we were truly at the point where we understood everything, I would not have uncovered multiple pieces of information that were previously missing in my first year of keeping. I've been keeping for several years now and I continue to uncover new behaviors, new information about health, new information about enclosures. And when I say new information, I really do mean new as in I have not seen this information anywhere. I'm just working with one species, multiply that by the hundreds if not thousands currently in captivity. The key is humility for all of us. We have so much to learn. I look everyday to see if my findings will be overturned and I'm ready to change my practices based on new information at all times. I sincerely hope that someday the standard will be understanding the process of becoming a good caretaker instead of following a specific script. I adore your podcast by the way. I need to catch up and a few episodes behind, but you have consistently been bringing people on who talk about the hard questions and bring up our need for further information which is the most important thing that the reptile community needs as a culture right now so thank you for that.

Thanks for joining me!

I'm sitting here in camp neither of those and yeah it's it's interesting and probably going to go on for a long time. I'm in camp figure out the animal's behavior and then give them options and then use that information to tailor the enclosure however the animal ends up deciding. My enclosures are extremely unique.

I agree with you on all of this, thank you for listening, you brought up some great points as well!

Very good points

food tastes better when you've starved... Easy to appreciate space after being kept in a broom closet 🐍

Yes this is true❤

Hi Lori, Bataar, my Bredli, is an incredibly calm animal and has always been a bit of a perch potato. He does exhibit the general calm, tractable nature the species is known for, but he is absolutely my least active Morelia. I can honestly say any of my Coastals, Darwins, or Papuans display more roaming and interaction with their environment than he does, regardless of time of day. I've been lucky enough to be able to regularly check my collection around the clock and observe many of them throughout the night, and obviously throughout the day. He's always had a bit of a penchant for staying in his hide all day, then he drapes along two perches at night when he's nearing feeding. To say he's entirely inactive is not true, but out of my group of Morelia, he is by far my laziest boy. You do have a much larger pool of bredli to observe than my lone boy, but he's honestly been such a lazy snake for years!

Love that idea!

That was the exact goal. People like you and I are the majority, but are often drowned out. Keep on keeping on!

Glad you enjoyed this one, Aurora! Thank you so much for watching 😀

Thanks for watching the episode and adding to the discussion!

I will copy and paste my response from a similar criticism below. You can see Chris's response in the thread as well, if interested (the original comment was posted by Cait, purple-ish display picture). I personally believe this episode's topic has a tendency to spark a knee-jerk reaction from the "advancing side". I have about 350 hrs worth of content dedicated to pushing reptile husbandry forward, so I think my thoughts on this topic should be clear. See my response below: _Thanks for watching the episode and sharing your thoughts. I can certainly understand your frustration. Personally I don’t think this episode or guest was promoting minimalistic keeping. At the heart of this conversation (from my perspective) is acknowledging that there are keepers out there who want to better by their animals but don’t have the means to do so. These keepers are often intimidated to seek guidance for fear of reprisal and when they do, are accused of being cruel to their animals due to inadequate care. If these keepers are afraid to ask questions and embarrassed to share their current “starting point”, then “we” (the advancing community) have failed. Whether we agree with the “elitist” label or not, that is how we are often seen. It’s worth reflecting on why that might be. Should these keepers have thought about the responsibility of caring for their reptile before acquiring it? YES. But how many of us actually did? Many keepers (including me) purchased their reptiles before fully grasping the significance of the responsibility. Should we chastise those keepers until they disappear (and so to their animals). Or should we come to terms with the fact that many of us aren’t able to keep idealistically and therefore should strive to help come up with husbandry methods that can act to offset other husbandry short comings (using a jungle gym for exercise, rather than upgrading to a massive enclosure for example). I think it’s important to help people improve their care by treating them respectfully and help come up with solutions for them._

Well stated on both sides, & all the input is GREATLY appreciated!! I started as ‘an old school’ keeper (as I was from the era where if you wanted a reptile, you had to FIND IT!! … &, there were zero pet reptile products.) ok, I was born in 1975 & I was born with Snapping Turtles (my dad kept some rescues since before I was born) & I have lived every second of my life obsessed with Common Snapping turtles!! (Still applies today.) I am very excited about how much interest there is today in the Reptile hobby, & I hope folks will continue to support each other in the most positive ways possible!!!😊

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you so much for watching, glad you enjoyed the episode!

Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching!

Thank you!

I completely agree with everything you’ve said here, Francis. In fact, I recommended the same thing in a private conversation regarding beginner species… Making the point that maybe snakes that reach lengths of 5 feet and lizards that can reach length of 2 feet shouldn’t be considered starter pets. Smaller species, and ones that don’t live quite as long would make better candidates. From my perspective, this episode is actually more directed to people who are already keeping rather than those who are looking to start their reptile keeping journey. In an ideal world, we can get beginners started on the right foot with proper information. However, realistically, many keepers, start with their animal first, and if we’re lucky, they begin investigating better her husbandry methods down the road (think people purchasing from big box stores, for example). So in my mind, this episode is really directed towards individuals who want to do better, will eventually do better, but maybe are not currently in the position to do so. Hopefully this conversation makes them realize they are not “evil or cruel“ for not having an ideal set up, but instead motivate them to investigate ways to supplement their current care to offset their shortcomings. Like the jungle gyms that Lori uses, for example

@@AnimalsatHomePodcast I understand your point and I do agree to an extent... but from experience 'people-watching' online for a few decades now, I think there is a VERY fine line between 'acknowledging more is required and wanting to do better' and 'becoming complacent, sitting in that rut and making excuses.' So sure, of course individuals that want to do better and eventually will do better are not 'evil or cruel' but there definitely should be emphasis on motivating them rather than accepting it. In my opinion. Otherwise, nothing moves forward. And sure, a lot of people naturally get very defensive about that - but if you remove all emotion it does not change that fact. I would also say, it is common to see people 'acknowledging more is required and wanting to do better' still going out and buying new pets before making the improvements for their old ones. I guess I see more of the latter than the former, now I think about it. So I think we should be understanding but that should not put a stop toward reaching toward improvement in the community. To my mind, if the keeper can afford new animals, they should focus on improvement for the old ones first. Others may disagree.

Yes, I completely agree. I was having a very similar discussion with another AHH admin. I think those of you have had to deal with the absolutely insane things that happen on Facebook have different perspective than me who essentially only deals with a podcast audience. I’ll copy and paste a message. I sent to the other admin below that I think is really important/relevant: Something to remember with the podcast is- The folks who listen to it are virtually ALL on "our" side. Whether their actual care is where they want it to be, their hearts and minds are in the right place. They are all dedicated to progressing towards a "gold standard". You won't find anyone listening to the show looking for short cuts or using it as an excuse to be complacent. The listeners quite often update me immediately with photos when they’ve made upgrades. In hindsight, I completely understand the reaction from people like yourself who are having to deal with ridiculous things on FB (one of the reasons I am so absent there). You TOTALLY have reason to have an initial reaction of "WTF! the idiots will use this message to continue to be idiots" lol The podcast is somewhat "shielded" from this. People who strive to do the bare minimum have ZERO interest in spending 1-2 hours listening to a weekly podcast. Hopefully it is comforting to know, that the messages presented on the show almost always fall on the right ears. I think this is the main reason I don't EVER get Rack People attacking me in the RU-vid comments, they don't show up for the discussions. Ever. As the producer of the show, this is something I'm privy to that is probably less obvious to the listeners.

@@AnimalsatHomePodcast that is completely fair, and understandable. I cannot deny I thought 'luck b*t*rd' as I read that haha. I am glad you recognise the difference as well between producing the podcast today, and the amount of acrimony some of us had to go through just to get our points across back when the hobby did not want to hear it. In some cases it took a huge amount of determination and sheer bloody-minded stubborness to get information across arguments that sometimes lasted days and weeks. It is fair to say entire waves of people took up the cause and got mentally burnt out by the constant arguments. It genuinely does makes me happy these days to see so many newer, younger keepers doing so well, coming out with such well-researched, well-polished videos and being paragons of better husbandry such as yourself, Joe, Liam and a great many others. It does make me feel the movement to 'take back' the hobby from the travesty the mainstream community zeitgeist became in the late 1990s through to the early 2010s has indeed been a successful one. It truly is in the hands of the next generation now. When I first came online in 2004 and started talking about my own methods of keeping - gained through experience catching and watching the animals, and many, many years of trial and error - I was positively laughed out of the room when I talked about geckos and snakes basking under UV, or snake enclosures at least as long as the snake is, or using three different bulbs in one enclosure for different things. In many cases by keepers that had never experienced the animals in the wild, only as captive bred specimens bred in racks. Now, not only is it not seen as 'odd' or 'fringe' to provide this, along with bigger, more considered enclosures that incorporate different forms of enrichment, it is becoming the norm in many cases. We have seen and witnessed this change, in real time. Perhaps it is not as evident over in America due to cultural and infrastructural differences in the hobby, as well as its size, but here in the UK we have seen a DRASTIC improvement in the welfare and visibility of good keeping in just nine years. A total about face! (We still have a way to go though). Keep up the good work!

Excellent point! I think you’re right, as we get better at reading body language, etc. understanding that requirements will become more clear

Thanks for watching, Sean!

I agree entirely. Certain lineages of certain species are absolutely domesticated and are very different from their wild counterparts, and I feel that often isn't taken into consideration. Of course some individuals thrive with complexity, but I've seen many cases where that isn't the case, sadly.

Yes.

Thanks for watching! You can find al the info and builds here 😎 ru-vid.com/group/PLh5fybvrrZIdn1MHZNZqQt4rNx9jA12bL&si=IAdi2pwrgisqJ3H4

Oh man 😞 good luck with the battle!!

Yes😊

Slow improvements overtime is perfectly acceptable!

@@AnimalsatHomePodcast that's exactly what I believe also, I like to think we are like pokemon, and as silly as that sounds lol I'm referring to the fact that all keepers veteran or novice keep evolving in the ways that they care for there animals, I'm not done at all with my upgrading of enclosures, I plan to eventually move both my ball pythons to 4x2x15s and my baby black rat snake a 4x2x2 since ive been observing how much he enjoys climbing and exploring high places, I'm also still researching other ways to give my animals the enrichment they very well deserve

That’s probably a fairly old article. There was definitely issues with poor quality lighting/lamps in the early 2000s. Those lamps had high levels of blue light and caused eye problems. Today’s lamps from the big name reptile lighting brands (Arcadia, ZooMed) won’t cause those issues

i can accept that @@AnimalsatHomePodcast

​​@@AnimalsatHomePodcastI find this very interesting and would like to read more. How many years do we have on these new lights and have they been tested with different pigmentation levels and animals? I have unfortunately seen some animals damaged pretty badly but it took 15 to 20 years for them to develop these problems so I am wondering if we have been able to study this long enough to really know how safe the new lights are. I'm very excited at the prospect of less damaging UVB lights, but a bit skeptical after some of the horrors that I've seen. Male animals ended up rejecting the UVB lights pretty heavily, but I do continue to offer they just immediately run away whenever the lights are on so I keep it minimalistic at this point. I'll have to look into which brands I have currently and the ones that were recommended here. I would love it if you could link some studies but I will go to Google scholar and see what I can find.

I know how you feel!

I've felt the same way, and I've heard a lot from people who are often thinking about getting into the hobby. I do far more than bare bones, but by some standards, I'm not sure anymore 🤣

Yes! Well said 😁

No one would suggest that a leopard gecko can’t survive in a tub with a heat mat and nothing else. That’s a commonly brought up counter argument, that they “survive” well enough in these enclosures so why change it? But just because they’re surviving doesn’t mean it’s the best method of letting them live. Studies have shown that animals kept in sterile, bare enclosures do more poorly on cognitive tests, and studies have also shown that heat mats are less effective at energizing reptiles than halogen bulbs, and that UVB has substantial health benefits to reptiles. The reason why you see less older geckos who have lived to be 15+ years old who have been kept in naturalistic, ‘advanced’ enclosures is because the major transition to such keeping has only occurred in the last decade or so. 15 years ago the heat mat and tub was the norm, and even nowadays keeping with full spectrum lighting and naturalistic enclosures is hardly the norm.

Well said, Rick! Thanks for watching, as always, 🙏🏻

I took it as….. At 10 years old he received a Ball Python that he kept in a 40 gal. Time stamp 46:05 and in currently in a 4x2x2.

Thanks for watching the episode and adding your thoughts, Tom!

This was absolutely the point I wanted to make, thank you so much for listening!

@@copperhead.reptilia You made a very good point and stated it very clearly. Thanks for bringing the discussion to the surface! This is a place I come to for healing and reflection and the aggression I have seen in the last year has made me feel less and less comfortable in the community. Thank you so

Thank you for sharing your story, Emma. That is certainly a trap that is easy to fall into, there are plenty of people out there promoting bioactivity as a starting point. As far as I concerned, this can make brand new keepers far too confident and over complicate the entire process (as you learned the hard way). Thank you for watching the episode!

I got mites from a new Corn Snake I adopted, even after a long quarantine!! I used to have 2 breeding pairs, & lots of babies of various ages… took me forever to get rid of them!! (I ended up having to trash everything & start over.) Glad you got them under control- it’s a very stressful experience!!😊

I was in your spot too. I absolutely hated rack keepers, and I looked down on anyone at a level I considered "lower". Not only did I have a mite experience as you did, but I met quite a few rack keepers who have fabulous enriched setups, and some of the healthiest animals I'd ever seen. It was eye opening, and absolutely changed my mindset on so much. Thank you for listening!

I would say look to their natural history and try your best to use elements of their natural habitat as enrichment. For example, I would think deep substrate and heavy amounts of leaf litter would be excellent enrichment.

Oh, and a varied diet is an easy one to implement as well!

Hi James! I actually keep a 4 year old adult female brongersmai- she currently has a 6x3x2 enclosure- for species that are largely sedentary like the short tails, I usually recommend deep substrate, ample decor for them to hide around, large amounts of leaf litter, some sort of burrow type structures, as well as a large water feature, because they do love humidity and will soak after large meals. Food cycling and prey type rotation is also a great way to spice up their care :)

what types of prey and rotation?@@copperhead.reptilia

i hear you, i just dont like the idea of all the things that come with dirt and leaves.

I share the exact sentiments, I feel the exact same way (obviously 😂)!

Respectfully, the point I was trying to make is that yes, by all means, every keeper should progress their care, and advance their husbandry over time. Stagnation is what leads to poor husbandry, in my opinion. But the point I wanted to make is that there is a HUGE grey area between a massive enclosure, and a barren tub, and the vast majority of keepers fall into that middle range, but oftentimes, they provide perfectly fine husbandry for their animals, but are afraid to share their setups and animals because certain voices and influencers in the hobby drown those keepers out. I absolutely advocate for giving the highest level of care possible, and unless for quarantine purposes, I never keep in sterile setups. Another point is that, yes, a 40g for a ball python is not the ideal, but is it better than a rack tub? Absolutely. I will 100% say I'd rather see an adult ball python in a 40g with plenty of enrichment, than in a barren tub at a breeding facility. Obviously more space is always ideal, so long as all parameters are met within that space as well, but we as a community need to also embrace the keepers that provide more than a barren setup, but maybe aren't able to recreate Ghana for their Ball Python. There are 44,000 Ball Pythons on MorphMarket alone, and an unfortunate reality is that it's simply impossible to give all of them massive enclosures, but that we also need to accept that there are plenty of ways to humanely and ethically keep an animal without setting a $1000+ barrier to entry, or without devoting an entire room to an enclosure. Everyone can keep in whatever way suits them, but so long as you always try to improve, that's the most important thing, and so long as someone always tries to move past a bare minimum, we as a community should accept and support them, and nurture further growth. Again, full respect intended, and I feel I may not have worded things as well verbally in the podcast. Cheers!

Thanks for watching the episode and sharing your thoughts. I can certainly understand your frustration. Personally I don’t think this episode or guest was promoting minimalistic keeping. At the heart of this conversation (from my perspective) is acknowledging that there are keepers out there who want to better by their animals but don’t have the means to do so. These keepers are often intimidated to seek guidance for fear of reprisal and when they do, are accused of being cruel to their animals due to inadequate care. If these keepers are afraid to ask questions and embarrassed to share their current “starting point”, then “we” (the advancing community) have failed. Whether we agree with the “elitist” label or not, that is how we are often seen. It’s worth reflecting on why that might be. Should these keepers have thought about the responsibility of caring for their reptile before acquiring it? YES. But how many of us actually did? Many keepers (including me) purchased their reptiles before fully grasping the significance of the responsibility. Should we chastise those keepers until they disappear (and so to their animals). Or should we come to terms with the fact that many of us aren’t able to keep idealistically and therefore should strive to help come up with husbandry methods that can act to offset other husbandry short comings (using a jungle gym for exercise, rather than upgrading to a massive enclosure for example). I think it’s important to help people improve their care by treating them respectfully and help come up with solutions for them.

I really appreciate your comment. I 100% agree with everything you say here. You may be right that perhaps these admittedly nuanced points weren't super clear in the podcast. I also acknowledge that I may be reacting from my experiences as an admin in a few large FB groups, including AHH as well as a group dedicated entirely to new Royal python keepers. It is absolutely true that most pet keepers can't start out with a 4x2x2 and full spectrum lighting, etc. We have to find a way to help them along a middle path that allows them to keep their new pet as well as possible while also helping them progress over time to a more ideal setup. I think a lot of the issue may be that the industrial style breeders are seen as husbandry 'experts' so a lot of these beginners start out with frankly awful husbandry advice. And so the struggle begins. I agree that if a snake in a less than perfect setup is provided with environmental complexity as well as exploration, learning, and enrichment opportunities outside of the enclosure, that is better than a 4x2x2 box with minimal enrichment - but doing that requires a keeper willing to really learn what enrichment is and take the time to provide it. Thanks again for your thoughtful and courteous response - I definitely agree with your points.

@@caitwn8548 I agree with every sentiment you have 100%, and I very much appreciate your response as well!

The minimum seems to creep ever up. When I was a kid getting into it. people reccomended a 10 gallon for leopard geckos. Nowadays commonly I see 20 longs or 40s. But there's people pushing for 4x2x1 too. I advocated for larger cages a lot back in the 90s/early 00's, but there's a lot of people advocating minimums--not ideal, but minimums--that are absolutely well over minimums. A 3-4' corn snake absolutely does not need a 4x2x2 to do well--it's great to give them that, particularly more height--but they can do well and get exercise in a 3x2x2. A really small adult may be fine in a 40 breeder.

Not to mention, you’d never find them! 😂 congrats on the successful pairing

Yes, the industrial rack breeding boom seems to have erased the past in some sense. Most of us who weren’t around in the 80s, don’t realize that there were plenty of people pushing standards back then (and before then) Because when we look back 20 years ago, into the early 2000s all you see is racks (it’s also possible that the people breeding with racks were most active on the internet/ forums, etc.)

The unlit tub culture disturbed me the moment I saw at first hit the scene. Having a day night cycle is really important to most animals even if they're not actively out using that light. I was actually quite surprised when I saw that trending right around the time that you listed that people were even considering that. I'm glad that people have started pushing back on it cuz it never really sat right with me. circadian rhythm is just too important to too many species in unexpected ways for me to ever be comfortable risking that kind of environment for anything other than deep cave species that simply do not come into the light ever.

Reading this, I have to make two points... 1. The 'advancing' cover-all name came about from the original, best and by far most influential group so-named, Advancing Herpetological Husbandry, which was set up a decade ago by a bunch of very knowledgeable European keepers that certainly are no members of the 'plug and play generation' - amongst our founders were the likes of Darrell Raw, who showed Bert Langerwerf around South Africa looking at agamas and sungazers; Dr Frances Baines, who along with Gary Ferguson has done the most to codify and educate on our understanding of reptiles and their interactions with light over the last 50 years; Roman Muryn, one of the founder members of the British Herpetological Society in the 1960s, and the single person that has changed our understanding of how different IR wavelenghs affect reptiles in recent years; Paul Tapley with his immense garden enclosures... Ricky Johnson who, whilst certainly young, is now a college lecturer on the subject.... and least of all myself, who surfed through the 80s on the backs of some of the greats of herp keeping. All these people witnessed the changes in the hobby, some of them fundamentally affected it at a deep and historic level throughout their careers, they rubbed shoulders with some of the all-time greats like Philippe deVosjoli, Chris Mattison, Ludwig Trutnau, Richard Gibson, Armin Geuss, Johann Krottlinger; Chris Davies, Tell Hicks, Daniel Bennett, Roger Avery, Jon Coote, Mark o'Shea.... contributing to the Litteratura Serpentium and the Ratsnake Foundation... and we watched the rise of the 'rack em, stack em generation' and a general downward spiral in welfare, and decided to DO something about it based on their own experience. Do NOT mistake those people for the slew of enthusiastic but young amateurs that have taken up the 'advancing' moniker, in some cases plagiarising information, and leapfrogging off the brand; or the many precocious and skilled young keepers that are now taking this information and running with it to positively influence the hobby like JTB Reptiles, Reptiles and Research and Dillon himself... all these were able to come about as a result of the original AHH steering a large subset of keepers BACK towards the correct course. Most of the original founder members AHH no longer engage with the hobby at large or do their own thing (Roman Muryn and Fran Baines are stalwarts that spend all their time educating) and it is for the newer generation of keepers to keep up the trend, which channels like this do fantastically well! The arrogance came from the then newer keepers in the early 2000s/2010s that were advocating the 'dark tubs' that had become mainstream, and the big name RU-vidrs with their myriad of impressionable followers spreading this mindset that normalised this style of keeping. 2. I see a great many people view the past with rose-tinted glasses. Yes there were fantastic keepers like Joe Laszlo and Bert Langerwerf.... but to make out that they were anything LIKE the majority, that things like hot rocks were not the norm; that anoles and chameleons weren't virtually guaranteed a quick death; baby iguanas and terrapins given out as fairground prizes; that people weren't trying out things like blacklights and frying their reptiles; that species commonly captive bred today like Mandarin snakes, Hundred-Flower snakes and so on were not virtually guaranteed to snuff it... is wholly nonsensical. The hobby has come a LONG way. Sure, some of the more intuitive and knowledgable keepers back then like Bert and Joe knew through observation and intuition what was best for the animals; but these things were not demonstrated or codified by science until much, much more recently. Until then, it was just anecdote and intuition. Don't forget, it was not until Cabanac that people started realising reptiles were not the emotionless beings people thought they were; it was not until the mid-nineties that the first reptile-branded UV tubes were proiduced (Vitalite and Zoo-med); it was not until 1996 that the first literature on the effects of enrichment on snakes was published by Jersey zoo; it was not until 2008 that the first paper demonstrating positive effects of UVB on snakes appeared; it was not until 2015 that Roman Muryn hit on IR-a being the most important wavelength in heat and started broadcasting this to other keepers; it was not until the last few years that affordable UV-meters and power density meters have become available to the average pet keeper and widely used. In the last five years we have seen more academic literature regarding reptile emotion and welfare than the previous fifty. A lot of that is NEW knowledge, there is NO WAY anybody can make out that we knew then what we know now - or that common practices today like providing UV for snakes were commonplace in the 70s and 80s - it just is not true. There were keepers ahead of the curve for sure, that went with their direct observation and pioneered a HUGE amount of knowledge that younger keepers take for granted today... but there was an awful lot of misinformation and awful husbandry back then too, and we simply did not have the calibre of equipment that we do today... and that will keep improving as time goes on. That's just how the world works. One other thing I have noticed from interacting with keepers on both sides of the Atlantic - the European hobbyists were doing this longer, and better, than the Americans ever did. What is given as new information now or bandied about with trendy, fashionable names like 'bioactive' was commonplace a generation ago on this side of the pond. I see people in the comments arguing over enclosure sizes; over here the standard size is 4x2x2 for most things up to the size of a Corn snake, King snake or Royal python. In America I keep seeing 20 gallon and 40 gallon boxes suggested for everything. There is a huge disconnect in availability of wooden enclosures for example, and in the price of such enclosures. I can buy a 4x2x2 for £100 here, in the US it seems such enclosures are far more pricy. There is a big difference culturally in what is 'normal' in this hobby in Europe, and the 'rack em, stack em' style of using small dark tubs that we still call 'American style keeping.'

@@FranacondaAHH Reading all this, I have to make one point....... Repeating things you have read (thinly researched and biased.) Then reciting your "findings" as personal interpretations is hardly informative. It's misinformation, but I will ask, did you personally know Joe Laszlo and Bert Langerwerf. Speak to them, about what they accomplished. Their methods and how they approached things. I certainly did know them. Were you involved with the reptile scene in the U.S., in the 70s or before? I Was. If you weren't there you do not know. What is your background? To make so many bold statements you must have quite a lot of first-hand knowledge of the people you talk about. Along with a lengthy professional and amateur history working with reptiles and the animal business, I know I do. What have you done?

​@@FranacondaAHH Although various investigators have explored the effects of light on a variety of physiological processes in reptiles (see Gehrmann, 1994A for a review) it was Joe Laszlo who called the attention of the herpetocultural community to the importance of temperature (Laszlo, 1979) and light quality (Laszlo, 1969) for health and reproduction in captive reptiles. He consulted representatives in the lighting industry and found a relatively new lamp by Duro-Test Corp. with the brand name of Vita-Lite® which was a close match to natural light. The reptiles he exposed to these lamps seemed to fare better than those illuminated with cool white tubes or incandescent lamps. His brief publication in Intemational Zoo Yearbook quickly led to the almost universal use of Vita-Lite® which held sway until about 1990. Joe was especially interested in ultraviolet (UV) light and for a number of years until his untimely death in 1987, we collaborated with a view toward designing a reptile lamp with a greater but safe level of ultraviolet B (UVB) or midwave UV than found in Vita-Lite® and other lamps (Gehrmann, 1987). During this time in the 1980's, two students of Duane Ullrey at Michigan State University, Mary Allen (1989) and Joni Bernard (1995), began studies exploring the importance of vitamin D and UVB to the health of reptiles, with particular reference to calcium metabolism and bone formation. These studies contributed to the development of the variety of reptile lamps available today.

That is a great way to do it!

Thank you very much for listening, very glad you enjoyed the episode!

Thank you so much for watching and adding your feedback! I’m glad you enjoyed the episode

Folks get cult like about a lot of things. It happens in homeschooling, too.

😊😊😊😊🎉

Can’t win em all! Thanks for watching

To answer you- I'm a keeper of 16+ years, with well over 70 species under my belt personally and professionally in that time, and a career of almost 9 years in animal husbandry, as well as humane care and handling procedures. I'd like to hear what you take issue with- I'm the first to admit I don't always word things the way I hear them in my head, and I wish I could reword multiple things to make my point clearer, but let me make something clear, as I have lower in the comments- I'm not advocating for minimal care or husbandry. But in my 16+ years in this community, we've never been more black and white than we are now. A minimal rack with no enrichment is obviously not ideal, but the point I was trying to make in this episode is that as a community, we consistently overlook the vast majority of keepers who are neither rack keepers, nor keepers who keep in massive, elaborate setups, which many sources now try to treat as the bare minimum for proper captive husbandry, which is simply not true, as multiple factors apart from space go into proper husbandry. Increasing your personal standards of care is something as keepers we should always strive for, and if you stagnate, you do yourself and your animals a disservice. But at what point does the hobby stop beating up on pet keepers who do far better than a rack, but keep in less than a massive, zoo grade enclosure? At some point we have to admit that a 40g is definitely not the end-all of care, but is it better than an empty tub? Absolutely, and as a community we often overlook perfectly humane care of animals in lieu of choosing rack vs. advanced setups. My point being, there is so much grey area that remains unaddressed in our community, and we truly need to stop beating up and judging the keepers who fall in that area (who are the majority, from firsthand experience) and still have animals that are healthy, cherished, and well kept. This is all food for thought, and meant respectfully, I might add- sometimes my typing comes off blunt.

Consider that a good thing! We don’t want to end up in an echo chamber. However, I suspect the reason you disagree with this is the same reason other folks below disagree with it. You can find my response to them below 😀