A follow-up to the wonderful thread wnateg started. Do people have strong opinions about how long newcomers to the hobby should wait before bringing home their second reptile? What were some things you wish you knew or did when you started to go beyond that first reptile? I've heard quite a few people say that they wished they hadn't grown their collection so fast, but I'm curious as to how fast "so fast" was.
My personal opinion is that one should complete a full "quarantine" at a minimum - make sure your first reptile is healthy and settled in, wait a few months, etc. Beyond that, it would be prudent to wait a year - maybe even until your reptile reaches something close to adult size, in the case of larger species - to see how and how much you enjoy owning the reptile you already have and how reptile ownership factored in to your life.
I myself am in the "looking for a second reptile" phase right now, and it's proven to be hard to follow my own advice.There's the slimmest of chances that a breeder I follow will have one of my dream snakes available soon - a pure Denton line anery BCL - and part of me is considering breaking my "wait a year" plan to pick one up if one becomes available. Said breeder won't be repeating this particular pairing for a few years and these particular BCLs can be hard to come by. So, while it definitely feels "too soon" for me, I am very tempted to pick up this specific snake and make it work...
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