Just wanted to share an update now that it’s been over a year since I last posted here. A lot has changed, and looking back at where I started really shows how far I’ve come.
When I first posted, I had a very mixed collection and was trying to figure out a long-term direction. At the time, my setup was a huge cornucopia of species—retics, ball pythons, rainbow boas, bearded dragons, frilled dragons, Cyclura, sailfins, crested geckos, colubrids, day geckos, green iguanas, pectinata, a caiman lizard, and various turtles. It was fun, but scattered.
After we moved into a new house with a backyard that inspired me, I sold everything and completely restarted. I began building outdoor enclosures using repurposed water storage tanks and picked up a few hardy species: bearded dragons, red-foot tortoises, leopard tortoises, and a baby sulcata.
I kept that group for about a year and saw great success keeping and breeding outdoors. That pushed me to expand into more outdoor-tolerant reptiles. I sold the leopards (they weren’t thriving outdoors the way I hoped) and acquired an adult rhino iguana pair, a subadult C. bakeri pair through a trade, a 1.2 group of panther chameleons, a 1.1 of caiman lizards, and a 2.2 group of adult red-foots.
Then I went through a phase where I thought I wanted to specialize in tortoises. I sold all my lizards, added Aldabras, more turtles, and turned my old rhino pen into a large turtle pond. Not long after, I regretted letting go of all my lizards and decided I wanted to keep at least one species again.
After some thinking, I picked up a 1.1 pair of possible het pectinata from someone who had become a mentor to me. Over time I added a 1.1 pair of Aussie water dragons (and quickly learned they weren’t for me). Then, unexpectedly, I won a female banana pectinata in a Palm Street auction I hadn’t expected to win. That pushed me toward the idea of building a more serious pectinata project. Around the same time, I also picked up a 1.1 northern blue-tongue pair.
After a lot of conversations with breeders and hands-on experience with my animals, I realized what I truly wanted to focus on: Ctenosaura. So I shifted everything toward that goal while keeping a few Cyclura, my albino green iguana, and my original tortoises and turtles.
Which brings me to now. My current collection includes 1.1 pairs of several Ctenosaura species and morphs:
• C. pectinata (possible albinos, bananas, Florida local, pied)
• C. bakeri
• C. acanthura
• C. similis
• C. palearis
• C. melanosterna
I’m working on adding 1.1 pairs of C. oedirhina and C. conspicuosa next.
Alongside them I have a female Lewisi hybrid, a female albino green iguana, my tortoise group (2.2 red-foots, one sulcata, a 0.0.2 Aldabra pair, and a Leopracata), a 1.1 pair of bearded dragons that were returned to me, and my long-owned turtles: A 1.1 Ornate wood turtle pair,1.2 yellow-bellies from my college days, 0.2 Rio Grande red-ear slider rescues, and a rescue western painted turtle.
Looking back at my old posts, it’s wild to see how much I’ve grown—not just in species selection, but in understanding, husbandry, and direction. My focus now is clearer than it’s ever been. I feel genuinely dialed-in as a keeper, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come and grateful for the journey so far.
