So in September i ventured down to good old Schwagstock…. Alone… Seriously. I know it sounds crazy, but everyone backed out at the last minute. Typical Schwag story. Anyway, on day 2, in the early AM i got up to enjoy a Schwag sunrise. I was sitting at camp enjoying that morning listening to some good music. And then i was blessed with Tool. That moment changed my life in a major way. And i’ve been thinking about it almost daily since that moment. So i decided i wanted to share it with you. Pay attention to these lyrics. Only Tool could bring art this solemn into manifestation.

Until next time…

Yup, mashed potatoes are good. Thanksgiving is in three weeks. That means mashed potatoes.

So things are rolling right along at The TDI. We have been knocking out project after project. We had a few more projects come up that weren’t planned, but that’s always the way it works. Story of our lives.

So we enter November. Crazy. For those of you who are fitness minded, a Club Fitness just opened in the front of our plaza. I know we are all taking advantage of that convenience for sure. The rates are good and the gym is straight forward. No BS. I would suggest you all check it out the next time you are in the shop.

We are currently developing our own line of care sheets. A lot of the care sheets currently online are full of old information. We decided it would be best to take the time and make our own. We’ve started to upload a few of them on the website. We will ultimately have a care sheet for every species in the store. It is a very time consuming process, so bear with us if you don’t see the care sheet you are looking for. On that note, there is no particular order in which we are writing the care sheets. So if you are waiting on a specific care sheet, let us know and we’ll bump it to the top of the list.

So we’ve got some strange and bizarre videos for the evening. We’ll start with ghost busters and finish with a strange mash-up about the universe. Weird…

Awesome Ghostbusters Multitrack – Watch more Funny Videos

We Are All Connected – Watch more Funny Videos

Some random shit we found the other night. Pretty Entertaining. Not much new at the TDI. We are rolling along on a lot of general improvements. The usual. Enjoy the vids. Until next time…

Huge Cannon Fires Pumpkins at 600 MPH – Watch more Funny Videos

Human Head Turntables and Drums – Watch more Funny Videos

Shooting An Anvil 200 Feet in the Air – Watch more Funny Videos

Contrary to popular belief, The Tye-Dyed Iguana does not actually sell Green Iguanas.  The reaction we get to this policy varies greatly.  Those of us in the industry understand completely the mentality behind our Green Iguana policy.  Many people, however, are not aware of the larger problem with the sale of Green Iguanas.

Green Iguanas are the #1 most abused and neglected reptile in our industry.  This is due to the overwhelming large amount of false care information in circulation.  The pet shops are also to blame in this situation.  Pet shops must know what they sell, and often they do not.  It’s hard to stop the spread of misinformation when a store front is helping to spread it.

We found ourselves in a situation where people thought we were lying to them when we told them how to properly care for a Green Iguana.  The common mentality is “I did it this way for years, it must be correct.”  Our response to this statement is one word:  Asbestos.  Look how long we installed asbestos in people’s homes until one day we realized it causes cancer.  Or better yet, from 1898 – 1910, heroin was prescribed as a cough suppresant.  Long story short, just because we did it for years, doesn’t mean it’s right.

Instead of selling Green Iguanas, we have opted to adopt them out.  You can add yourself to our Myspace and Facebook pages.  We do most of our adopting through those websites.

We need to take everything we used to do for iguana care and throw it out the window.  There have been amazing advancements in captive reptile husbandry.  We now know how to take care of these amazing creatures.  Here’s a little overview of some basic care techniques.

Basic Caging Requirements
The cage dimensions should ideally be twice the animals length in each direction.  That means a hatchling iguana would need a cage roughly 2 foot cubed, or 2ft x 2ft x 2ft.  10, 20, and 30 Gallon tanks are never sufficient.  An adult iguana will need a cage 12-14 feet cubed, or a bedroom.  This is not an exaggeration.  Green Iguanas are very large arboreal (tree dwelling) lizards.  In order for them to maintain their natural behaviors, they need to be able to move freely in all directions.

Basic Lighting Requirements
Green Iguanas are a diurnal species.  This means they are awake during the day.  As a result, Green Iguanas need access to a heat source, a UVA source, and a UVB source.  Luckily, all standard heat bulbs emit UVA.  They do not, however, emit UVB.  This is a common misconception, again largely due to misinformation.  UVB bulbs will specifically say UVB on them.  Plant bulbs and fish bulbs are not the same thing.  They emit very low levels of UVB, not what’s needed by the iguanas body.

UVB bulbs come in three strengths: 2.0, 5.0, and 10.0.  These strengths directly correlate with the intensity of the UVB rays.  See the chart below.

* Reptiles can get to much UVB just like humans.  Be sure to pay attention to the minimum distances.  For instance if you put a 10.0 on a Veiled Chameleon, this would be to powerful of a bulb for a tree dweller.

You can purchase UVB bulbs here.

Basic Diet Requirements
No lettuce of any kind.  Sure they like to eat it, but Americans also like to eat McDonalds.  It doesn’t mean you should eat it every day.  Lettuce lacks almost all nutritional value.  It’s primarily water and cellulose.  A green iguana’s diet should be composed primarily of dark leafy greens such as collard greens, mustard greens, and turnip greens.  See the chart below.

Pelleted diets can be very convenient for busy lifestyles, but the formula is far from natural.  The number one ingredients in pelleted foods is corn or soy.  Neither of these exist in the canopies of Central America.  Although the iguana may eat it, it’s not an optimal diet.  They make a great supplement to a balanced diet.

Basic Heating Requirements
Green Iguanas need a basking hot spot of about 90 degrees.  This can fluctuate 5 degrees in either direction.  The cool end of the enclosure to be room temperature.  Night time heating is not neccessary unless the animal is dropping below 65 degrees.  At that point a night time heat source is required.

You can purchase heat bulbs here.

What’s up world. Been a couple weeks. We’ve had quite a bit of chaos these past few weeks. It all began with the Chicago Reptile show. There were a bunch of us running around up there. I ran into a few of you. I imagine i missed a few of you as well. We picked up some nice new breeder stock. In fact, we’ve got quite a bit going on with the breeding for next year. Here’s our list of animals set to produce for next year:

Jungle Carpet Pythons
Children’s Pythons
Spotted Pythons
Rosy Boas
Red Tail Boas
Hypos Red Tail Boas
Hogg Island Boas
Dumerils Boas
Bearded Dragons
Veiled Chameleons
Carpet Chameleons
Yellow Ackies Monitors
Crested Geckos
Various Corn Snakes
Albino Nelsons Milk Snakes
Gray Banded King Snakes
Honduran Milk Snakes
Brazilian Rainbow Boas
Woma Pythons
Emerald Tree Boas

So yea, we’ve been busy. All of these guys are ready to go. The only ones that may not be ready are the Womas. But we’ll see.

On top of the breeding, we’ve been weather proofing the building for the winter. It’s right around the corner. We are also getting ready to do more modification to the rodent room. Sean and I will be tackling that project beginning this week sometime.

Those of you on our MySpace and FaceBook may have noticed some chatter about a Television show… Well, that one is a long story. Basically there has been some serious interest from the guys in Hollywood. I don’t have any specific details at the moment. As we learn more, we’ll keep all of you posted.

We are also in the process of building a second snake room in our breeding facility. We will have that up and running this week. This will allow us to have one room that we hibernate and one room that is warm year round.

So yea, lots of shit going on as usual. Only so many hours in a day. Anyway, its Monday morning. Lots to do. Until next time, enjoy this short vid.

Electrical Wire Tears Apart Tree – Watch more Funny Videos

Remember that word? Suds? I haven’t used that word in a while. Makes me think of a bubble bath.

Anyway, the big Chicago Reptile Show is coming up next weekend? Our crew will be swinging through there on various days throughout the weekend. Let us know if any of you are going to be up there. We can hook up for a beer or two. You never know.

Anyway, we have a couple parties today. One of which is at the shop. Those are always nice. Less travel.

On that note, enjoy the best of the best:

Viral Video Legends Compilation – Watch more Funny Videos

Yea, so this is the next big thing.  There are millions to be made here…

Blah blah blah is right.  So happy Sunday morning…   Horray.  Not shit on the agenda today.  We have one party and it’s at the shop.  So in essence, it’s a pretty laid back day.  We are shooting to have some new animals in stock this week.  We hoped to have them last week, but our distributors had crappy availability.  I’m not to sure what we are expecting yet, but we have quite a few cages to fill.

You know, the crappiest part about this blog is the lack of personality i’m able to give it.  I’d love to be able to type about the crappy time i had the other day, or a great triumph.  But that’s difficult when the entire world is reading your words.  You have to be careful what you say or you could offend someone.  Espcially in the sue-happy country we call home.  I think that’s why days get missed on the blog.  The inability to really express one’s thoughts.  Some people would say fuck it, say the truth anyway.  But those of you who really know me know the great ability for my mouth to get me in trouble.

Anyway, i guess that’s the little bit of truthful insight for today.  It’s about time to get rolling for the day.  I have to hit Home Depot this morning.  Lots of odds and ends to tie up this week.  Until next time…

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Over the past few months we have brought several new items into the store. Among these items are the legendary Waterland Tubs. For those of you who aren’t familiar with these, they are a revolutionary turtle and tortoise housing product. They are perfect in just about every way.

The water tubs provide a 75% water / 25% land setup. The land tubs do just the opposite. These tubs provide true land for aquatic turtles, not floating turtle docks. The docks definitely serve their purpose. But they only work for so long. Eventually a turtle will out grow the dock. When we used a dock with our larger turtles, they were constantly pulling it off the side of tank. It seemed like we spent a ton of time reattaching the dock. Giving the turtles the ability to climb out of the water onto true land, as they would in the wild, is a luxury most captive turtles will never know.

We have recently moved some of our aquatic turtles into the medium sized Waterland Tub. Our main focus with doing this was to allow our female red ear slider to lay eggs if need be. A few years back she had become gravid and had no place to lay in her tank. We would remove her and put her in an egg box, but the entire thing got to be a huge pain in the rear. So we decided that a Waterland Tub was the key.

As we set up the tub, we had to decided on a substrate for the land portion. Our first choice was ZooMed’s Eco Earth. This product is perfect for egg laying. It is absorbent, holds humidity well, easy to clean, inexpensive, soft, and easy for nesting. The best part was the inexpensive part. It took about 15-20 bricks of the Eco Earth to fill the land section on the medium tub. Using the Eco Earth kept the cost way down. HOWEVER, there is one MAJOR pitfall to the Eco Earth. It clogged our big Fluval filter within about two weeks and made draining the tub for cleaning very difficult. The Eco Earth clumps together pretty bad once it gets wet. However, if you can work with it getting in the water, it would be an A+ number one choice.

A second choice that doesn’t clog like the Eco Earth is sand. Now sand could get quite expensive, depending on how you purchase it. One could purchase the washed, fortified, reptile sand such as the Reptilite Calci-Sand. This is definitely the safest, cleanest option. This is also a rather expensive option given the amount of substrate required to fill these tubs.

We are getting ready to switch to sand and plan to use Paver’s Play Sand from Home Depot. If you purchase this sand, it is important that you purchase Paver’s Play Sand. Home Depot carries two types of play sand. One they keep near their concrete mix. It’s a “washed” play sand. The problem is that it most definitely isn’t washed. That sand is dusty as hell and filthy. The Paver’s Play Sand is actually kept in the outdoor garden center. This sand is fine and clean. No dust at all. The funny thing is that most employees there don’t even know they have the Paver’s Sand. If you ask for play sand, they almost always send you to the dusty crap. The big downer with sand is the extra weight.

On to the water portion of the tub. They can be fitted with a bulk head to drain the tub. It can also be drained using a more conventional siphon. We put rock in the bottom of the tub to keep waste down, but you can use the tub with a bare bottom. The medium tub holds enough water for the turtle to swim. And it’s plenty deep to run our Fluval FX5 filter.

The high density polyethylene used to make the tub is light weight and easy to clean. The price is right given the size of the enclosure. Best of all, we stock these in our store. So if you are local, you don’t have to ship these. And shipping is not cheap on the larger tubs. For those of you who don’t live near by, we do ship these tubs. You can check them out on our website here.