Howdy! I’m Tande, I’ve been a customer to a few folks at MorphMarket ! I’m a huge fan of reptiles and over the past few years have more than jumped into the deep end with how quickly my collection grew!
My SO is very much more into amphibians and fish - he has several axolotl and quite a number of frogs (white’s and a pacman!). We’ve bred the axolotl once last year but our project was interrupted by a natural disaster that ripped thru our area. We’re hoping to try again at some point!
This here is Sirius, my champagne banana pastel boy. He’s not exactly the smartest guy on the planet but I love him quite a bit. We have five ball pythons, three of which are set up in their own bioactive enclosures. We do plan on breeding them in the future!
I just recently got two mexican hog noses, just small babies that I hope to raise and breed. Westerns are not allowed where I live but other types of hognoses are fair game, and I really want to get into easterns, southerns, and mexican hoggies, but I’m starting with mexicans. If you know anyone who breeds them I’d really like to get in contact with other keepers and perhaps help make them more accessible since they’re really beautiful (and quite sassy).
And this is Professor Hotdog, one of our two blue tongues! I LOVE this species, they have such big attitudes and have a wide palette in regards to food they will like. Hotdog really likes eggs and earthworms and broccoli. Little Smokey, the younger one we have is one of the best cuddlers we have (somehow more of a cuddler than our pythons ).
Overall I think we’ve hit the perfect place with our collection (though I do want a pair of emerald tree skinks at some point beyond more mexican hoggies!).
I am an engineer/programmer as well, so if anyone wishes for help/assistance in web development or the sort, I’ll be happy to help (and perhaps work for cute skinks or hoggies…).
Welcome aboard! Love all your scale babies and professor Hotdog is the best name I’ve heard in awhile …. I recently got into hognoses too. Yours looks like my little boy! Everyone here is pretty cool and knowledgeable…. Hope to see ya around often
Welcome to the community Tande! I am absolutely already in love with Sirius. It’s very cool you do bioactive enclosures for your ball pythons. If you ever have the time and some photos I’m pretty sure a lot of others would love to see it and see how you did it. I love the idea of doing that for several of mine that I’ve deemed just as pets, and it’s always cool just to see what others have done!
Siri makes it easy to love him with how outgoing of a snake he is! I’ve so far found that I’m in love with champagne morphs in general because of their dark eyes and with the banana eyes as well it just darkens them all the more. He might be a hodge podge of random morphs but he did turn out quite amazing and he gives good neck rubbies when cuddling.
I could probably make another post about my bioactives if people would like, my first attempt was a failure but so far I’ve managed not to kill any of the plants on this second attempt! I used a mix of top soil, coco fiber, a bit of josh’s frogs mix, and spaghnum moss - two of the enclosures do have a drainage layer with clay balls and a cloth for separation from the rest. My first attempt was a failure mostly because I did not make the substrate deep enough, now in all three dragonhaus enclosures I’ve pretty much have the soil up to as high as they can go.
I will say I wish I had put my snakes elsewhere while the plants are getting used to where they are at, but most of the plants that Josh’s Frogs picked out for me have been alright with the slight trampling that my ball pythons have done. All three enclosures have a decent population of isopods (white minis i think they’re called) and springtails, but I still do spot cleaning from time to time for the larger parts of dumps. I’ve begun to leave snake shed below the water dishes for the isopods, who eat that up very very very happily. I’m hoping to introduce some magic potion isopods into Sirius’s enclosure once our grow out population is fairly large in our tub!
We also raise ASFs to feed our huge collection but only so far have two breeding groups. I really love these little guys and recommend breeding them even if you only have two or three ball pythons since they’re both entertaining to watch and not too pricey to keep once you have the initial setup. We know a lot of folks around the area with BPs as well as pet stores that are interested in buying our overstock (same with the future mexican hoggies), and it’s worked pretty well so far!
I will say the biggest reason we got into breeding ASFs and snakes/axolotls in general was to teach our daughter about the natural world and general life things and how to take care of another animal. She’s one of the rare kiddos not afraid of much (except ants for some odd reason)! She has a ball python she calls her own (Cygnus!) who is a GHI morph that I’m curious to see how it’ll mix with Siri next year!
Welcome to the best place to be for reptiles! Good looking animals. I’ve always wanted a BTS but don’t have the space for the enclosure I’d like to make for one. Someday.
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…. I recently got into hognoses too. Yours looks like my little boy! Everyone here is pretty cool and knowledgeable…. Hope to see ya around often 
