Vacation in Florida...

My wife and I are staying in Lakeland, Fl for a few days. I've mapped out a few (6) stores we want to hit between here and Tampa.

If you guys have any suggestions on places we should check out in the area, let us know! We'll probably be on the Orlando side tomorrow.

We're specifically looking for mammal exotics, but I'll always keep out an eye for snakes too. :D

Theres some cool Gator Farms all over the place down there! Do you fish? They have some really good In-Shore and Off-Shore fishing trips down there too:gj:

I do enjoy fishing, I didn't think about it until we got here though :(

Yesterday we hit about 6 stores. We headed from Lakeland to Tampa.

Reptile Shack
Creature Castle - pretty cool, I have not seen silver dollar turtles in quite some time
Scales Exotic Pets - This guy is a diehard collector. He had an awesome pair of frog-eyed geckos. He also had a breeding pair of red-tails. The female was either very gravid or just fat, I didn't ask. He also has a leucy rat snake for 95$. That's the best deal on anything I have found yet.
We also went to one Pet Supermarket. The locations in GA don't have reptiles so it was cool to see what they had. We also went to two different PetCo's. The one in Tampa didn't sell reptiles (WTH?!) and the one in Lakeland had a really nice Reptile setup. Much better than any I have seen.

Today we're going to Gatorland and we'll hit some exotic stores around Orlando.

I find it very odd that we have only seen about four corn snakes. I was under the assumption that Florida was the corn snake capital :P

We're looking for sugar gliders, if anyone can help us. Craigslist has been a bust. Only one of the petstores we went to yesterday had them and they were WAY more than what we want to pay. I'd rather not get them at the flea market........

Sugar gliders are expensive. They're expensive to buy, they're expensive to house, they're expensive to keep.

Check craigslist for melbourne or orlando, saw a pair with cage for $200 in melbourne

Thanks for the tips, guys.

We have been looking into sugar gliders for many years. We didn't get serious about it until earlier this year. We contacted many people all around Florida to find exactly what we wanted. We ended up going with a 4 month old pair. There were many older ones that needed good homes, but everything we read said that new owners should get a young pair.

The first time I ever looked into sugar gliders was about 10 years ago. I remember going to a flea market and seeing them there for pretty cheap. I also remember having seen them in the local mall petstore. Times have changed though, USDA breeding regulations and all. Which is good! So we didn't save any money getting them in Florida, but we met some good breeders. There is only one licensed breeder in GA that I found and I didn't really want to buy from them.

I'm sure pics will go up sometime soon. They are VERY hard to take pictures of. :rolleye2:

BTW, Gatorland was pretty awesome. I was disappointed in the selection of exotic stores in Orlando. It appears, from talking to some breeders, that people mainly use reptile shows to find their reptiles in the Orlando area. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I talked to some breeders I found on FC and they couldn't recommend any and they questioned why I'd even want to shop there.

Congrats on the gliders :)