Anoles!

[gasteriaphile]

Hello All, new member here.

Perhaps I am now in the right place. I have been visiting (and joining) several reptile forums over the last week. Most all have nothing to do with anoles. When I came to this forum one of the first posts I saw was the one about whether an anole and a tree frog can co-exist. Heck! just the fact that an anole was mentioned was cause for my hopes being raised.

I am interested in setting up a vivarium for a small to medium-sized species of anole. I intend on having one male and two females in a 29 gallon terrarium. As to which species of anole, I am hoping to try one of the Caribbean species, but so far, very little prospect of getting any.

I kept both Anolis carolinensis and A. sagrei as a youngster. Now as an adult I'd like to have something a bit more "exotic", like for example A. roquet or A. oculatus. I am aware of 'Todd the Tarantula Man' offering roquet, but these are coming straight from wild caughts-ville.

What I really am hoping for is that this message will be seen by an anole hobbyist; someone who is seriously working with some of the species, breeding, etc. and who would help me acquire some healthy, non-stressed, captive bred (or at least stabilized) specimens.

I know there are anole fanciers in the United States but can't seem to get into contact with them. So far it doesn't seem that any of them has an internet presence. But hope springs eternal in my world!

So if you are one please contact me; and if you know of one, please help me get into contact with them.

Thanks, Breck in Spokane

[froggsong]

You might try PMing JohnEDove. You can click on that link to get to his profile page. I know that he keeps anoles, I'm not sure if he keeps the type that you are looking for, but he might be able to help you find someone that does. Good luck on your search!

[beckdg]

have you checked out the anole forum at kingsnake.com??? or maybe johnedove

oh and welcome to the forum.

[gasteriaphile]

Originally Posted by beckdg

have you checked out the anole forum at kingsnake.com??? or maybe johnedove.

YES AND (see above post) YES.
In fact the kingsnake forum was one of the ones I was referring to that had little if any anoles.

[JohnEDove]

Hi gasteriaphile,
All I am keeping anymore are sagrei.
The fact is that 99% of all Anole specimens being sold are WC including Anolis carolinensis and Anolis sagrei. Your best bet in keeping something like A. roquet, if you can find them and get the proper info, would be to learn the specific sub-species you are getting then study up on the climatology of their natural habitat in the Lesser Antilles.
No matter how you cook it unless you can make contact with a breeder in Europe you are going to have a difficult time finding any CB in the US. Few people are interested in breeding them due to the inability to compete with the WC market.

[beckdg]

yes i agreed with froggsong... johnedove has been caring, breeding, and writing care sheets since some of our members were in diapers.

your request is not a usual one and not too realistic, but can be done imo.

wc will be the mainstay for a good while, so persistence and patience will help you alot considering the chances of even finding cb at all. i will not however say that your search will be successful.

breeding these guys won't even pay for food considering w/c prices so there's no incentive to breed whatsoever.

simple fact is if you find what you're looking for, it will be due to persistence. you are not going to find them overnight no matter where you go. it may take you a year or more to happen across someone who has extra babies to get rid of. worst of all it is very likely that when you find them the owner might not know how to ship and live on the wrong coast for you to pick up. i say you need to visit every forum you can get to and post a wtb (want to buy) thread in their market places. about once a month you will want to bump that thread back to the first page. in conjunction with that i'd search sites that sell anything like ebay and craigslist daily. this is also the wrong time of year to buy captive bred reptiles regardless so given all the factors it's no surprise you're finding nothing. you should get better results in spring time and if you find anything chances are it will be sometime in spring or summer.

i did not want to be the bearer of bad news and was hoping you could find what you were looking for with a little help from a veteran. seems it isn't working out in your favor so far and i'm sorry for that.

good luck finding your babies and if you do, we'd love to see what you get!

[froggsong]

You could always get some WC and breed your own CB babies.

[gasteriaphile]

Dear John, Beck and Frog,

Thank you all very much for your kind and informative responses to my post. I would like to offer a few observations and responses of my own.

First of all, when I first read John's post I was puzzled and rather surprised. Why? Because when I said that I was looking for hobbyists who are engaged in keeping (and breeding) anoles, I was not referring to people who bred them for sale, per se.

Maybe the issue here is one of definitions. To me a hobbyist is an amateur, literally someone who does what they do out of a pure love for their hobby. I had been assuming that, for these serious amateur hobbyists, these keepers of anoles, the whole wild caught business would be basically irrelevent, because they were not into it as a business.

As a matter of fact, from the very outset of this "odyssey", I assumed that I was not going to get the kind of anoles I want from businesses. Why? For the very reasons that you all gave: there is simply not enough money in breeding anoles and selling them. (Apparently the "big money" these days is in geckos and bearded dragons).

So this is why John's, and later Beck and Frog's posts and their contents puzzled me. It made it sound as though there are no anole hobbyist breeders and collectors! at least of the Caribbean species and others. Obviously there are hobbyist keepers of Anolis carolinensis, A. sagrei, and some of the other generally available species.

I have reason to believe that such hobbyists do still exist, because I received a reply from one such person who said that there are others like him and that approx. 40 species of anoles are currently being kept in one form or another in the United States. Unfortunately I only received that one email from this gentleman and my efforts to follow up have so far met with no replies.

In any event, to respond to your warnings about being patient and persistent, those are two of my middle names! And if it comes down to taking my chances and buying wild caught specimens, well I'll try that too, but that is a separate issue which I would like to discuss on another thread (i.e. about the amount of stress generally laid upon the animals).

Again thanks for you all's thoughts.

gasteriaphile

[beckdg]

i sure do hope things work out for you. it is not impossible, but difficult yes. the wtb posts and ebay type sites i think would be your best bets. you seem to be going about things the right way, and sorry we could not be of better help... we can only offer what we know or have... sorry. i would not be too worried about others who frown on you for choosing an anole... if they are going to post who cares... i'd think someone who enjoys them the same as you do will eventually come along if you post in enough places... i would stand my ground and keep looking till at least after fall has ended if that's what you really want... then maybe consider w/c... and i do agree with your reasoning... no animal should have to go through alot of the things that go on in the pet trade... we did not mean to make it sound as if there are none... we just know that what you want is unusually difficult to do and as you have experienced anoles are frowned upon openly in many online communities due to the reasons you yourself stated and the fact that most specimens collected even now are in fact wild caught... this will prove difficult when searching on line which sucks cause it's the easiest way to communicate and locate things nowadays... if there is a good lps in your area that you deal with, maybe someone there can point you in the right direction... you never know where you're going to get what you're looking for so (of course) keep your options as open as possible... good luck, sorry we couldn't do better for you, and your welcome for any help we might have provided... i know it doesn't seem like much, and it's frustrating, but i'm sure you expected some of that.

best regards and good luck, BECK.

[JohnEDove]

Sorry you did not find your needs met here gasteriaphile, having done some research on you I do hope you will come around from time to time and help us out with our flora and aquaria problems though. A good biologist is always needed on any herp related site.

As for your definitions I believe what you are really looking for is a herpetoculturist specializing in genus Anolis.
Hobbyists tend to be the people who keep pets. They will on occasion have a sucessful breeding and raise the hatchling et al to adulthood but for them it is more the beauty of the animal that counts.
Herpetoculturists are the breeders. Often they sell to the pet trade sometimes they just do it to see if they can.
I count myself between the Herpetoculturist and the Herpetologist.
For the Herpetologist it is primarily the study of the animals that counts.

I work with various species, off and on, trying to study what their native habitat is and replicating it as much as is possible so I can determine the proper care parameters and reasons for their behavior. I found in doing so I also ran into that part of the natural cycle that is reproduction. Some species require very strict environmental cycle conditions to be willing to reproduce. Of course if I am successful I try to market some of the offspring but once I have learned what it is I want to know, if the animals cannot pay for themselves through reproduction, I generally move on to the next species of interest and give my animals to some hobbyist that has an interest in keeping them. Then I correlate my data and start to write up care information.

There are a some of species of reptiles I keep primarily as a hobbyist and a few rescues I keep because they needed a home.

My Anolis sagrei are only still with me because when I gave away my collection of them about this time last year I missed a male and female who only revealed themselves when I placed a pair of semi arboreal snakes in their enclosure. I figured, “Aw what the heck, they are active neat little diurnal lizards, and since I have the crickets and such I’ll just set them up in a viv for show”. Now I am back to about 17 of them and working on plans for a larger viv. LOL

And before I forget;

Originally Posted by beckdg

johnedove has been caring, breeding, and writing care sheets since some of our members were in diapers.

Thank you for that, it was my chuckle of the day.
I only wish I had one quarter of the care sheets finished that I have started.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am constantly picking up new information from younger people like those on this forum and others that make me go back and make revisions.

I would also like to apologize to gasteriaphile for not honoring his PM request for more personal email contact but that is just not something I do with people I do not know. I tend to be somewhat of an introvert outside the few web sites I semi-actively or actively participate on.