the reptile zoo

[cmack91]

so i went to california for my grandmas 70th birthday, and while we were down there we went to the prehistoric pets reptile zoo. if i had to sum it up in one word, it would be "ugh". first, all of their prices were insanely high, pastels for 175, they couldnt have even been 100 grams and they were really brown, spiders for 250, normals for 50-100, and those were the only bp's. white lips for 250, gtp's for 500, the only reasonable prices were on the tarantulas, rose hairs for 20, gbb for i think 40, goliath bird eater for 40. and heres the kicker, he had a NORMAL, CORN SNAKE, for $150.00!!! on sale for 100, an albino (regular amel) for 225. it was outrageous. and this is just the retail area.

in the zoo, half the snakes had stuck eye caps, probably 70% had stuck shed, and even more than that were in disgusting cages. i mean one snake in a cage, with 3 piles of poop, all of them completly dry. almost all of the water dishes had a film over the surface, some were even growing algae. a good third of the animals were skinny, most had fire ants and flies crawling on them, some even had mites, and a few even had noticable amounts of mucous. i was appaled, i felt disgusting just being in there. my dad even thinks the place was disgusting, and for the most part hes one of those "its a snake, its fine in a box with a heat bulb" people (although he is coming around). i would go into more detail but i dont really want to think about it, and when my dad gets home i'll get whatever pics he took off of his camera (i was too grossed out to take any).

this isnt the worst place in the world, it probably sounds worse reading this than it was, but it was still pretty bad.

i lost all respect (not that i had a whole lot) for the dude that runs the place, and i will never buy a snake from him if my life depended on it. dont waste your money going there, unless you want to spend 5 bucks being grossed out all day.


***if a mod see's this, can you move it to the inquire/ feedback section please? i feel like it should be in there***

[Cameron Lamb Exotics]

You have to take in to consideration it being a pet store. All pet stores are high priced, thats how they stay open. Hes not going to give you the same prices you would get online from a breeder because he has bills to pay.
As far as the cages being dirty I cant justify that. Ive been there numerous times and noticed a couple of the cages here and there being a little dirty but with a couple thousands of animals you cant expect it to be spotless.
However Im just giving my 2 cents, because I live 15 minutes from there. Like I said Im not justifying dirty cages or sick animals but would really like to see the pics of cages you have as I havnt been there in a couple weeks.

[MasonC2K]

You should see his youtube vids. He is also the most annoying sounding man ever.

[Cameron Lamb Exotics]

You should see his youtube vids. He is also the most annoying sounding man ever.

I dont have anything against him. He just sounds enthusiastic.

[cmack91]

i understand higher prices and all that, and like i said, it probably sounds worse reading it than it is (one of my local petstores is far worse), but these are higher prices than any pet store ive ever seen.
with how long hes been dealing with reptiles, it was kinda suprising to see how dirty everything looked. hopefully they were having a "bad week" or something like that, but it just seems either lazy, or like there arent enough employees to provide better care. but based off of all the other stuff i saw, i wont be doing business with him in the near future

heres what i found (i did find his camera)
you can see urates towards the back of the cage, and also a couple turds up front, these were not fresh by any means



other side, you cant see it but there a kind of sludge lookin stuff in the bottom of the bowl, and the waters kinda green. also, behind the bowl there were more urates


here you can see the flies, and the stuck shed, there was more that you cant see here. also spots where urates were picked up but it doesnt look to me like they actually cleaned in. there were also urates in the water on the other side (which i dont have a picture of)

there was an oil looking type of film in the water in this bowl but you cant see it

there was algae growing in this bowl, you can kinda see the green on the right side of the bowl, it wasnt the bowl itself

[cmack91]

I dont have anything against him. He just sounds enthusiastic.

he sounds more manic than enthusiastic to me, but thats not necessarily a bad thing

[SpartaDog]

I lost most of my respect for him when I saw the way he handled his snakes, shoved his fingers into eggs, and forced a guy to overcome his fear instantly rather than gradually.

[h00blah]

I didn't have a problem with his youtube personality. When I went to the breeders expo and saw him and some of his crew, they were quick to blow me off when I said I wasn't interested in retics, and I just enjoyed taking pictures. The animals at the expo looked fine. I wasn't planning on ever buying snakes from this guy tbh. Idk why, but I just got a weird vibe like they wanted my money and not my company lol. Most of the other vendors at the expos are so nice, and they enjoy chatting it up about the reptiles that they're selling because they love them! Brock, Heather, Maki, and several other forum folk are always so polite and fun to talk to!


Response to all the pictures: I've seen far worse in pet stores. Dirty substrate. Glass tanks that are so dirty on the sides that you have to constantly adjust to get a better look at the half dying reptiles hiding inside them... Dead crickets / worm. Mouth rot... This is all off the top of my head from a reptile store I visited briefly.

Those cages could use a quick cleaning.. They need to make sure they get all the flies out of there, and the water needs to be changed. I don't see any problems with the reptiles themselves in those photographs tbh. I won't just take your word for it, but I wouldn't be surprised really.

[HighVoltageRoyals]

I've been in there a handful of times to pick up some feeders when I lived in Huntington. I will say that I'm not a huge fan of this place but, believe me, it can get MUCH worse.

As for the limited stock of ball pythons, you have you express interest in the higher end morphs to be shown to the back where they have a HUGE amount of the higher end stuff. I have no idea why they don't put some of the higher end ones out but they are all in the back where you have to ask an employee to escourt you. They did have some really nice looking ones in the back that seemed well cared for but I will agree that most of the "display" aimals care is a little lack luster.

As for the owner, he is pretty persistant and frankly, gets on my nerves. For example, the one time I saw the back room of BPs (I had to wait about 45 minutes to get access becaue he was on the phone with one of his buddies; also, after I paid the admission fee) I told him what I was interested in and he just started throwing all the snakes he could at me (not literally...I hope you get my point lol). After throwing a couple at me, a girl and her dad came in and I was left in the dust holding onto a lesser male that was very pretty, but highly over priced. I tried giving it back to him multiple times but kept getting cut off as he started his whole speil over again with the girl and the father (it didn't help that they knew each other and carried on about this and that). When I finally got him to take the lesser from me, he said he would put my name on it and hold it for me. I said I wasn't interested because of the price and he insisted that my name be put down on the animal.

I guess, long story short, the owner isn't that bad of a guy but is persistent and frankly...annoying. The pet shop could use some work but you have to know what to say to get in the back room to see all the "good stuff".

[cmack91]

i didnt even try to get in the back room, but i also got the vibe that he wanted my money over anything else. all the animals in the pics are fine for the most part, except for bugs. and exactly how you said that they need a quick cleaning, is kinda my point, it doesnt take long to put on a glove and grab a pile of poo and throw it away. im not saying they need to remove the animals, brush out the substrate and bleach the whole cage every time a snake poops, but it doesnt even take a minute to do a quick spot clean. plus the fact that there were a few employees that were just standing there the whole time i was there, instead of doing anything. and i was there for about 3 hours and i dont think they really did anything.

and yes alot of pet stores are way worse, i went into one that didnt even know they had a ball python in one of the cages until i brought them ove and showed them