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Hey all. My name is Cameron, you can call me Cam if you want. Or King XD

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I spend a lot of time looking after my animals. I keep reptiles, amphibians, and other vertebrates and invertebrates. I prefer to grow live plants in my tanks. I was looking for something good to plant in my very moist Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) vivarium. I discovered Sphagnum Moss would be the best selection, especially since the vivarium was already planted with 100% organic peat moss.

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I ended up ordering some live sphagnum moss from a carnivorous plant website. I planted the moss in my vivarium, and hopefully it'll start growing. My salamanders are trampling it more than I thought they would, so hopefully it doesn't die.

I think I actually need to take the moss out and soak it in distilled water. I've been misting it with water from my "spare water" aquarium, which has been treated, but is still hard water from the tap. I hope I haven't done too much damage to the moss :-\

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All of my other animals are brumating for the winter. Basically they are sleeping in a mini fridge for the winter at about 50F.

This tank has been cleaned and freshly re-planted. It is now awaiting for it's pit viper counterpart to come out of brumation:
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My treefrog tank has been cleaned and retro-fitted with a breeding pool in the bottom. I'm hoping to breed them this spring after I bring them out of brumation.
Here's the treefrog tank:
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And here's a shot of one of the treefrogs last year before they all went into winter brumation:
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These are my common map turtles (Graptemys geographica):
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This is Hercules, my prarie kingsnake. He loves his bath time XD
This is his old tank, he's moving to a much larger one this spring when he comes out of brumation
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This is Deena, my red milk snake. I don't have any current photos of her tank. It's just peat moss with live spider plants and a water bowl:
(The photo was super big and I didn't feel like scaling it down, so here is a link instead of an embedded image)
http://www.cpeebs.com/files/lampropeltis_triangulum_syspila/lamp_trian_syspila_2.jpg

This is my wild caught striped bark scorpion:
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I get a bit bored at times in the winter without my animals to interact with, and I found myself browsing the web for more information about carnivorous plants. I read tons of reviews, caresheets, and forum threads. I got a bit excited by the prospect of growing carnivorous plants, especially since I have a roach colony for feeding my insectivorous animals. The baby roaches are tiny and would be perfect for feeding the plants! (I would think. What do you all think?)

Here are the roaches. You can see mostly adults in this photo, but the babies are tiny, and there are tens of thousands of them O_O
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A few nights ago I ordered a 10-plant “mystery box” :D I got on amazon the next day and overnighted some 6" pots. I already had organic peat moss and organic perlite at home. Lastly I ran out to wally world for a few gallons of distilled water.

Here are the plants that arrived in my mystery box. Please note, these plants are in dormancy because of the time of year I ordered them, so they are much smaller than they will be during the active growing season.

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1x Akai Ryu
1x Czech Giant
1x Bristletooth
7x Seed Grown

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^ Czech Giant

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^ Akai Ryu

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^ Bristletooth

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^ Seed Grown

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^ Akai Ryu & Bristletooth

So yeah, these are my very first carnivorous plants, wish me luck! :p

Hmmm... a little more about me:

I have a girlfriend, she gets jealous I think of all the time I spend with my animals, LOL! I'm sure she just looooves that I just picked up even more plants to look after XD

She goes out in the woods snake hunting with me in the spring and early summer. More accurately, we go field "herping" (which is derived from the word herpetology: the study of reptiles and amphibians). She was terrified of snakes before we got together, but I eased her into it with some small harmless snakes. Less than 6 months later she's comfortable handling 5'5" black rat snakes! I'll share some pictures with you guys. I hope you enjoy them!

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^ K with her very first snake!

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^ K, Me, my little brother

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^ Me after diving into VERY COLD April waters after a water snake

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^ Me and my little brother with a monster water snake

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^ Me

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^ K with her first big snake :D

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^ K with a medium sized snake

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^ K with a racer, and me with a copperhead

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^ K with a MONSTER rat snake

Anyway! I've got 1000's of wildlife photos, but I won't bore you with anymore of those XD Hope you guys enjoyed my post!
 
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Nice pics! Welcome to TF!
 
DUDE! You are living the life I dreamed about when I was into herpetology as a teenager. Lived in Houston and rarely ran into anything other than water moccasins and garter snakes. I can't believe some of the snakes you're catching. Awesome dude. Love the salamanders, too.

As for the carnivorous plants, welcome to the hobby! Your sphagnum moss you ordered should be find as long as you keep it wet enough in relatively soft water. It tends to be pretty sensitive to very hard water.

Anyway, give me a shout if you ever need any advice.
 
Nice pics! Welcome to TF!
Thanks :)

DUDE! You are living the life I dreamed about when I was into herpetology as a teenager. Lived in Houston and rarely ran into anything other than water moccasins and garter snakes. I can't believe some of the snakes you're catching. Awesome dude. Love the salamanders, too.
haha, thanks man :D We have a lot of fun snakes in Missouri.

As for the carnivorous plants, welcome to the hobby! Your sphagnum moss you ordered should be find as long as you keep it wet enough in relatively soft water. It tends to be pretty sensitive to very hard water.
Thanks much for the warm welcome :) I totally replanted my salamander tank with new peat moss that has only been exposed to pure distilled water and I've been misting the moss daily with distilled water. Hopefully it'll tolerate my salamanders walking all over it :p

Anyway, give me a shout if you ever need any advice.
I definitely will, thanks again :D
 
Welcome to TerraForums. Incredible photos. You should blur out the CP vendor name though. The only CP vendor that can be mentioned or discussed (per forum rules) is the owner's FlytrapsShop.com.
 
Welcome! Great pictures, Im really liking those salamanders really cool! You remind me of the crocodile hunter or something haha. Your sphagnum moss should be just fine I got frogs that jump on mine all the time and it growing like crazy. As mato said already if you need any help let me know too.
 
that's quite a few photos! welcome to Terraforums!
 
Some sweet critters, ya got there, Cam. :)
 
  • #10
Welcome to TF!
 
  • #11
Welcome! Those are some gorgeous herps you've got there! Reminds me of when I was younger.
 
  • #13
Woot! another herper here! Great lookin tanks dude! I love that tiger sal tank... And the map turtles.. I have a big ol Northern Diamondback terrapin girly named LandPhil... :)

Looks like you're doin everything right.. :) But for the future I would keep from using water from your fish tank.. Its not necessarily the hardness of the water or anything, but the TDS and nutrients.. Fish food/poop = nutrients... And the fact that it was tap water to begin with, high TDS... So the plants wont be happy with it if used often.. Will end up burning the moss...
 
  • #14
welcome to the forums. :)
 
  • #15
Nice herps! You must be experienced with the field work jumping into a river with a water snake. That copperhead has some amazing colors! Also, the Sphagnum should rebound within a few weeks if kept moist. I've seen plenty of much heavier animals step on it and it grows back rapidly.
Good luck with the plants.
 
  • #16
Dude! Sweet pictures thanks so much for sharing. I absolutely love your Tiger Salamander tank. That's exactly how I would've loved to have kept them.

Nice flytraps they look healthy and I'm sure you will find that that they are easy to care for if you give them the proper requirements which it looks like you would already have a good grasp on if you keep herptiles.

Welcome to Terraforums. :)
 
  • #17
Woot! another herper here! Great lookin tanks dude! I love that tiger sal tank... And the map turtles.. I have a big ol Northern Diamondback terrapin girly named LandPhil... :)
:D Thanks so much! I spend a good amount of time sitting in my animal room staring at that tiger salamander tank :crazy: :jester: Post a picture of LandPhil (kick *** name), I wanna meet her :-D

Looks like you're doin everything right.. :) But for the future I would keep from using water from your fish tank.. Its not necessarily the hardness of the water or anything, but the TDS and nutrients.. Fish food/poop = nutrients... And the fact that it was tap water to begin with, high TDS... So the plants wont be happy with it if used often.. Will end up burning the moss...
Most def, I have since switched to using only distilled water in the tiger tank. I actually took the whole thing apart, un-planted everything, tossed out the old peat and replaced it with new peat that I soaked in distilled water. There should be ZERO trace of tap water in there now :banana2:

welcome to the forums. :)
Thank you! :D

Nice herps! You must be experienced with the field work jumping into a river with a water snake.
I definitely have some experience with water snakes :p I'm also VERY familiar with the way their teeth feel in my hands & arms :jester:

That copperhead has some amazing colors!
The copperheads around here are gorgeous, I agree

Also, the Sphagnum should rebound within a few weeks if kept moist. I've seen plenty of much heavier animals step on it and it grows back rapidly.
Good luck with the plants.
Good deal, thanks :)

Dude! Sweet pictures thanks so much for sharing. I absolutely love your Tiger Salamander tank. That's exactly how I would've loved to have kept them.
Thanks a lot :D They seem to like it.

Nice flytraps they look healthy and I'm sure you will find that that they are easy to care for if you give them the proper requirements which it looks like you would already have a good grasp on if you keep herptiles.
I hope you're right :p

Welcome to Terraforums. :)
Thanks much :D
 
  • #18
Aww, I envy some of those herping trophies! Living in the great white north, one can only dream...

Good luck with the flytraps! They are very forgiving if given the right conditions, but be careful, this hobby is extremely addictive!
 
  • #19
Aww, I envy some of those herping trophies! Living in the great white north, one can only dream...

Good luck with the flytraps! They are very forgiving if given the right conditions, but be careful, this hobby is extremely addictive!
Thanks for the kind words :)

Why do the hobbies I pick up always seem to be the addictive ones? :scratch::jester:
 
  • #20
Here ya go :) Old photo from several years ago.. she's like twice this size now lol..

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even older
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And in case you're ever bored and wanna browse some photos.. here's a gallery full of old photos.. I no longer own any of these guys, as i've moved onto this hobby now.. but still like to reminisce.. :)
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v233/blkkestrel/Snakes/
 
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