wohnzimmer weiß mit holz
hello reptil.tv fans to episode 111 111, a very nice number, matching the carnival season here is my introduction animal being a fan of big snakes, my heart opens up now this is a madagascar amazon tree boa, sanzinia madagascariensis for me a dream of an animal there are different forms, colors and areas this one is a green one they are among the nicest ones, these green ones
the interesting thing with these sanzinias is ... ... nobody is yet breeding them this is still an animal, nobody is able to breed i can't even tell why, there are tricks, like temperatures and so on no matter what you try they do pair but no results yet as far as i know, there is nobody in europe who is breeding these sanzinia madagascariensis on a regular basis if you know someone, please send me an email
but as far as i know sometimes there are some breeding results by coincidence, perhaps this one as well when i started, 30 years back there where smuggled from madagascar to europe and the us a german was going to jail for 2-3 years smuggling them into the us he got sentenced there for smuggling i felt sorry for him, because he was a young guy but smuggling stopped
and there was the so called "bavarian connection" also smuggling bigger quantities of them, but luckily its all over now consequently this became a rare terrarium animal i just hope someone finds out the trick how to breed them after my long intro we now get to ... ... the actual topic of today's episode, its here on my hand as our title suggest, crocodiles in our living room, is our topic today i'd like to show that crocodiles are rather unusual as terrarium animals definitely not something for everybody
a student with limited space might have problems but there are enough folks who have enough space to have crocodiles of course, the smaller types, as we will discuss them later as you know me for a long time, here is my old example, model trains there are many folks who have model trains at home and nobody calls them crazy for collecting trains to me this is the same with crocodiles or other big saurian when you want it and can afford it than you can afford a big terrarium and bigger animals
and have them in the basement or even the living room that's possible and that's our topic today this white one is not s easy to have, it was an albino mississippi alligator it was a perfect color for my intro but now we talk about the ones which are more suitable for a terrarium the mississippi and bigger alligators are more suitable for zoos they aren't easy to have them at home, although they can become very brave but definitely to big but there are small types
this one is a cuvier's dwarf caiman, paleosuchus palpebrosus they grow up to 1.3, 1.4 meters including tail, approximately 50 centimeters for the body they are the smallest crocodile type, paleosuchus palpebrosus then there is the paleosuchus trigonatus so one is the cuvier's dwarf caiman and the other one is the smooth-fronted caiman difficult to differentiate by the optics you can differentiate by the occiput bump
but very difficult the cuvier's dwarf caiman are the smallest crocodiles than there is the dwarf crocodile if you remember our africa episode, 2 years back we where looking for a dwarf crocodile the bigger ones grow up to 1.5 meters than the yacare caiman and there are any different variations of them yacare become relatively big
crocodilus crocodilus can also become very big there are type that are smaller but most of them grow up to 1.5 to 2 meters this is rather on the edge providing enough space for them from a price point you got them rather cheap, in the old days that's why some folks just bought them and they become very brave but regarding their size, the are on the edge
and anything beyond that is for zoos and so on now about keeping them in general there are no common rules across germany in some states and even counties rather administrative districts its not allowed to have them when you live there its bad luck with the crocodiles its not allowed, but you might get an exception but its difficult to get, w/o a real good reason
if you don't work on a doctors degree its very difficult lucky enough in many states, like here in baden-wuerttemberg also international its allowed to have them in germany we have the guidelines how big the boxes have to be the guidelines according to the administration specifies ground part 4 by 3, head to body length
and water part 5 by 4 here i have a meter and a crocodile ooooops this one has head to body length 12 centimeters this means ground part 4 by 12, equals 48 3 by 12 equals 36 round about 50 by 40 centimeters for the ground part and the water part 5 by 4
approximately 60 by 50 for the water part for such a young animal, something you can manage an adult would have a head length of about 50 centimeters the ground part would be 2 by 1.5 meters and the water part 2.5 by 2 meters also manageable so you can have it according to the administrative guidelines in a space of 8 square meters but no limit, you should better have it even bigger
beyond the actual minimum guidelines now the first part, managing young animals here you can see a good terrarium for young crocodiles now everybody could call this a primitive device my recommendation is keep it simple with young animals very important is the hygiene the water must be clean, the animals drink the water they swim in and code into
it doesn't matter if i built a great terrarium if i can't keep the water clean the easiest way to keep the water clean is to exchange the water every two days and they can drink it and you will see you won't have any problems with the animals i think we never had a young crocodile die and this is because of the hygiene and the clean water a very important point that's why such primitive cages
are ok, filled with water down here and here is a ground part i just used a water basin, turned around, for example of you could use such a hiding device another trick cut out an edge and the animals can go in and find a dark hiding place and they have a water part where the stay most of the time and they have a ground part
this stone is the ground part, also very important also adding a heating uv lamp the uv lamps is very important for crocodiles and all saurians creates a real good hv light, either hqi or hwl a real strong lamp, this one has 100 watts ok for this size, or even better to choose 160 watts as a sun place, as a hv lamp also to heat up the place, including the water
we don't especially heat the water we fill in warm water our water has 35 degrees celsius when we fill it in, our animals love it you can see it than it cools down slowly to room temperature we have these cages in warm and heated rooms when you keep it in a cooler living room, you have to choose stronger lamps when i have a warm room, a 100 watts lamp is enough if i have a living room with 22 degrees celsius, i would use 2 100-160 watts lamps
so that you get around 40 degrees in the sun spot and the water is cooling down between 25 and 30 degrees and that's perfect for young crocodiles again, to make sure i explained this right this big basin we empty is completely, over the toilette get rid of the old water and clean it up and fill in fresh water, a really important point i have crocodiles since 30 years
don't waste your time with simple water systems now our lamp goes on and off ... don't try to suck out the water and feed new one in ... that's rubbish keep it primitive, just empty the entire water this way you are sure to exchange it every second day no experiments with fancy devices after several years this is getting to small and than you will need a big crocodile habitat, and you can't exchange the water this simply any more
and that's what i will show you now here is the big crocodile area down here is my charly he is a broad-snouted caiman i got him 25 years ago from dr. brock he was the crocodile expert no. 1 in germany he left charly with me 25 years back i think he is to big for a private purpose he has 2 meters
head body length about 1 meter i think a place like this nobody can have at home it is a caiman latirostris not an animal for a terrarium but we can explain how to build a big crocodile cage we use a "pond foil" we put it underneath the granite plates be careful not to have any holes in it i lay it out in the entire place
and the granite protects the foil very important, avoid making any holes this costs a lot of money and if you have a hole, you have a real problem personally i like this method before this i used epoxy resin but that's somewhat poisonous you have to be very careful or you have to let outgas for a long time or it poison the water and your animals drink this water
so, epoxy is very poisoned, i choose pound foils from a design point of view, this is an entire water area and i did put the ground part above the water area this way i get a bigger water area this is because of the guidelines or just to have more water the animal can hide underneath, what he does, when we have visitors many wounder, where is the crocodile ? but he is just sitting down here, in the shade, like out in nature where they hide underneath some plants
and that's what he can do here as well but he is also hanging around on the ground, back here, where we get nice sun shine he likes this place, to take a sun shower and i don't have to put bars in front of this window and this is a good alarm system against thiefs so i don't have to worry about buglers coning through this window, with the crocodile in front and heat is supplied through our central heating system there are copper pipes we put them in first, underneath
so the central heating system is heating it up its heating up the water and the ground as well and some green stuff to make it look nice, but he doesn't care about that but it looks nicer and one important tip for such a big cage when i want to go in, to clean up anything he will hide underneath and he can not jump up from the water onto the ground so when i work up here and he is down there
i'm save that way he would need to climb up before he can bite me in that time i can escape again so, that's my way, having water and ground separated this works well if you have water and ground next to each other than you would need a door to separate it so that you can clean up the ground area while he is in the water of you clean the water while he is in the ground area
here i'm save, when he stays underneath about the filter, as you can see, the water flows in through this yellow pipe and exactly below is the pipe where the water gets out i show you our filter later so down there the water finds it way out and flows through the filter and gets pumped back in up there, so we have a permanent circulation of water which is important for such a big basin, i need to filter and have circulation this way we also get some oxygen and the water doesn't turn bad let me show you my filter system now
this is the third big crocodile cage i built throughout my career and it became better each tine very important you have to think big about those filters don't think about small filters that you usually might have the crocodile would code one time only and your filter is blocked down here is my water outlet goes into my filter and inside the filter we have these blue filter mates
they take out the bigger dirt we want to get rid of the bigger dirt particles we have 4 such mattes inside and we clean them every now and than the water flows through these filter mattes behind that we have a board with holes where the water can flow through and in the back we have a simple filter pump it sucks out the filtered water
and pumps it back into the basin a very simple installation and the specialty is the pump only transports the filtered water, it doesn't have to handle the dirt the dirt comes in down here, all by it self we are at the ground level of the crocodile basin the water just flows in here, into the filter flows through the filter and the fresh water is being pumped back
don't try it the other way around if you try to pump out the dirty water, the pump will block every second day only use the pump for feeding back fresh water and you see the real big hoses here, for the dirty water you have to use real big ones, because of all the dirt limit the connections where you can i use a t-bar splitter here this goes out directly into the sewage water system same as our toilettes
here i can open it and the dirty water flows out just open this valve here to let the dirty water out this is a proven setup for the last 20 years that's really good and as i said, rule no. 1 you have to make it really big in all dimensions a small filter won't do it everything needs to be approximately 10 times bigger than for a normal fish aquarium one of the most important devices
with crocodiles is such a broom simply to scare off the animals when i walk into the basin we need to stay separated that's easiest with such a broom i don't like to disturb him, while he has a rat in his mouth usually its enough if i just touch him a little bit everybody has his space, and his is here underneath now it doesn't seem to work right now, lets see
usually i go in and he goes down there its only now, that he doesn't do it this way and as we can see, there are brave crocodiles when you get them young, they are usually brave charly came to me when he was older already there is no chance to change him as long as he doesn't see me, he feels ok the trick is, he is down there and i'm up here and can clean everything and if he doesn't like it and comes up, i still have my broom
and i can manage him, but so far i never had to do it that's why this broom is the most important device with crocodiles now about feeding, these nice small ones we feed partially with insects super adult grasshoppers the like a lot whne you feed grasshoppers you also have to add minerals mineral d3 or we add some baby mice they eat them easily in this size
the young ones can get good size feeding animals the carry the around for a while, but that doesn't matter we feed them 3-4 times a week such a baby mouse or 2-4 times a week 2 grasshoppers as they grow up you can stretch this when the are small you feed them 3-4 times a week when they are bigger 2-3 times a week a big one 1 time per week animals like our charly get nothing through winter time, when it is cold
but usually we feed this big one once a week he eats 3-4 rats once a week that's enough for him its amazing how little the big ones eats, compared to their size so, feed the young animals well they grow up fast and with the big animals, like with the snakes as well the males don't get to much and the females you would feed better, when you would like to have eggs
and female, that hedges, 2-3 times a week a male only 1-2 weeks to the end another hint crocodile become big our big charly can be dangerous he won't kill me but he can hurt me seriously even the smaller ones, when the bite you will feel it and you will have a serious wound, so its definitely not a toy for kids about biting, its not to bad with the small ones
i'd like to you you what it looks like if this small one bites me small wounds, just trying on my self not as a show but to show you the result when this small one bites me i hope it will work he doesn't bite as hard as the smaller one before its funny, he is rather soft it doesn't hurt as much i won't give him the finger though ok, you can see it, we have only small bites
he doesn't really want to you can compare it to tattooing in this size, its manageable ok, we have some small bites, but not easy to see many crocodiles become very brave, when you get them small this would be my recommendation like our charly, when he isn't brave he much more difficult to handle when you get them small, try to handle them regularly
you will be grateful later that you can handle them without any problems but as i said, its a wild animal, not a pet and be careful with kids or visitors around even if it is brave, it still can bite and with bigger ones it doe really hurt at the end i always try to talk about breeding as well we saw some color variations, like albinos there are albinos and really black ones
there are piebalds one guy in the us has them only a few of you will try to breed crocodiles it takes a long time for them to mature takes 6-10 years you need a large terrarium, but you also need that for one animal only when you breed the water level needs to support the animals when the pair the male gets his tail underneath the female
and the water level needs to be high enough so that both tails are under water if the level is to low you can't breed them and what i recall right now as well don't make it to deep, the crocodiles don't like that eitherand what i recall right now as well don't make it to deep, the crocodiles don't like that either they rather stay in shallow waters even with young animals, we have the water not to deep, so they can stay relaxed with their back feet and the fron feet they have just about on the ground with their tows and the head is above the water
when they stay in the water, their front feet need to just about reach the ground and their back feet need to be able to stay that's the prefect water position for a crocodile, the young ones and the big ones and if you plan to breed, high enough to keep their tails under the water as always at the end, our recommendation about good literature this is "crocodiles" from dr. brock dr. brock was a dentist but the no. 1 crocodile expert in germany and he had crocodiles as a teenager already sadly he passed a way some years back
but he was the experts and wrote this great book he know everything about crocodiles and i can really recommend itbut he was the experts and wrote this great book he know everything about crocodiles and i can really recommend it still a great book and my tip and now i have another nice surprise for you you might have heard it, crocodiles loose their teeth and they keep growing again not like the humans, where we only have 2 cycles the crocodile ones fall out and grow again
and so does our charly, he keeps loosing his teeth i collect them out of the water and from the last clean up i collected four of them i'd like to give away these four teeth i don't know who wants one but i think it would be nice to have a real crocodile tooth leave a comment here on youtube, why you want a crocodile tooth and leave your name with it and pleas give us also a thumbs up and subscribe to our youtube channel
and we will give away a crocodile tooth for the best four comments to be fair, we will raffle of four winners, out of all comments the dead line for this is february 28th, 2018 ! after that we will find out the winners that's it for today check my crocodile teeth, check my balls and stay true and here i show you the setup of reptil.tv before we can film charly, see him down there he really doesn''t like our activities here
you can hear him complaining before we can film here, we have to clean it up this isn't the best job around here and lets replace the lamps as well so before we can film, we have to work here he is, and you can see me in the mirror, great picture and look at this, a coin in the basin, in our reptile shop interesting, some people throw money into this water and now i show you our other hobby
the crocodiles loose their teeth and because i love all my fans that's why we have to search the water for these teeth and charly hates that more than our cleaning but we have to do ot i stretched out a little bit have a look at this nice tooth i don't know yet what to say he bites quite well, hopefully the bigger ones don't do it the same way
it can hurt the finger tip ops, what a nasty little beast in my free time i do some modeling, how about that ? i don't like him being there, he should go down by now the fire alarm goes off now, what that about ? have a look where he goes as long as i climb up here