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We were so busy this week, I neglected to post about the Kalamazoo Reptile Show this weekend!

We’ll be there Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Hope to see you there!

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Rainforest Station will again be vending at the Swartz Creek Retpile Expo 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 4, at the Swartz Creek Masonic Temple, 7839 Miller Road, Swartz Creek MI 48473.

Jeweled Curly Tail Lizards

We will be bringing some neat field-collected lizards including Asian Water Dragons, Vietnam Tree Dragons, Red-Headed Agamas, Pink-Bellied Swifts, Desert Side-Blotched Lizards, and Jeweled Curly Tailed Lizards.

We don’t normally carry field-collected animals, but these are all great animals for breeding projects, and we’re hoping people will begin to breed more of these species that are difficult to find captive-bred.

We’ll also have CB juvenile Red-Eyed Tree Frogs, Dendrobates leucomelas, D. tinctorius “Infer-Alanis,” blue-phase Australian White’s tree frogs, and a couple other surprises.

We also just received a new shipment of Irish peat bricks.  These are solid peat, straight from the bogs of Ireland, not those compressed briquettes that fall apart when soaked in water.  These make great “dams” or embankments along the edge of water features.  Moss and climbing plants will root right into them, and they create a very natural looking transition.

Also watch for an announcement on the On-Line Store homepage about new, lower pricing on Exo-Terra terrariums!

Remember, we offer free delivery to the show for on-line purchases, just choose “store pickup” in the shipping options, and leave a note in the comment section that you want us to bring your purchase to the show.

The following weekend, April 11 and 12 Rainforest Station will be vending at the Michigan Reptile Show on Saturday, and the West Michigan Reptile Show in Grand Rapids on Sunday.  We offer free delivery to those shows as well.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via email or by phone (number is in the blog and store banners).

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Two shows this weekend: Swartz Creek Reptile Expo -  10 a.m to 3 p.m. Saturday, March 7; and the West Michigan Reptile Expo -  in Grand Rapids from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, March 8.  So, with me on the road, Marcia will be holding down the fort at the store.

And remember: We offer FREE delivery to the shows!

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We’ll be at the Kalamazoo Reptile Show this Saturday, February 28, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
In addition to all our regular stuff, we have a bunch of tarantula spiderlings in a number of species.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Jim and Marcia

Real JUNGLE VINES!
REAL as in, “somebody cut these things down with a machete, and shipped them to us!”

Frankenstein Vines

Perhaps the craziest looking of the bunch are Frankenstein Vines. These knarly, twisty things look like some sort of mistake of evolution – they are so ugly they are cool!

Then, there are the Surreal Vines:

Surreal VinesNatives call these undulating beauties “Monkey Ladders” because of their shape. One of these would look really cool with a vining plant like creeping fig working its way up the ladder.

Dangling Pig Tail Vines look like the monkeys got bored and started braiding the vines just for kicks:

Dangling Pig Tail Vines

These are available in two sizes: the smallest are about an inch in diameter, the larger up to 3 inches in diameter.

If you’ve got a critter that’s more on the chunky side, you might want to consider a Sumba Vine:

Sumba Vines

These fat boys are thick and strong, easily able to handle a full size dragon, monitor, or a pretty big snake!

Looking for more “freak factor”? How about a Tentacled Shoot?

Tentacled Shoot

What the heck? did a hurricane drop an octopus in the jungle, where it dried up into these?

Or, are you looking for something different that the same old driftwood to create climbing perches? Bali Wood Blossoms are just the trick!

Bali Wood Bloosom

Sometimes referred to as “parasite wood,” these freaks of nature grow out of fruit trees on the island of Bali. Residents cut them off, and the lumps left on the tree trunk aid in climbing the tree to harvest the fruit.

These can be used anywhere you would use driftwood to make a perch: mount them sticking out of the substrate, silicone them to the background, whatever, they will catch viewers’ eyes much more than another chunk of driftwood.

Questions? Feel free to contact us

Dart frogs like to use bromeliads as both a place to perch, and to rear their tadpoles. Bromeliads hold a small pool of water at the cup created at the base of the leaves, and many species of dart frogs will deposit their tads in these to keep them safe from predators. If you are getting into darts, you’ve got to have some of these in your vivarium. Get them now, so they have a chance to get established before you get your darts – which are due later this spring!
We are also carrying epiphytic orchids, mounted on cork bark.

We are looking forward to seeing these orchids bloom, because they arrived from the wholesaler without I.D. tags. We were told they are all terrarium compatible, so look at it as a surprise package!

And, we have added to our selection of tropical plants with several new varieties of philodendron, fern, and two varieties of alocasia.

We also received a new shipment of sheet moss, and still have some nice pillow moss in stock.

The Pillow Moss can be used to cover the entire substrate, or as an accent with sheet moss or leaf litter.
And, speaking of leaf litter, we are now stocking Magnolia Leaves, the premium leaf to use if you want to create a layer of leaf litter. Magnolia leaves are slow to decay, so they don’t throw off the nutrient balance of the vivarium like some other leaves can. They provide great hiding places for both microfauna and feeder insects, forcing your frogs to behave more like they would in the wild, foraging for food, instead of just waiting for it to drop to the substrate in front of them.

And, watch for another post on our new natural Jungle Vines. Imported directly from the rain forest, we now have all kinds of sizes and shapes of REAL jungle vines for your vivarium. These are really COOL, and I can’t wait for you to see them!

If you can’t make the Grand Rapids show, look us up at the Kalamazoo Reptile Show on February 23.

Have a question? Feel free to Contact Us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K7-I-gx-3E

The Kalamazoo Reptile Show is earlier this month, on January 5.  The West Michigan Reptile Show in Grand Rapids is still on the second Sunday, January 13, but is moving to the Howard Johnson conference center on 28th street, just east of the U.S. 131 exit.  This facility is at ground level, so no more stairs to climb (especially nice if you buy one of our naturalistic terrarium kits).

Below is an example of the kind of water feature you can design with our kits, using our Hydroton clay drainage material, which is a fraction of the weight of gravel.

For more photos, check out our updated About Us page.

This month we have added two new frogs, but I haven’t had a chance to photograph them yet for the web site: Tiger-Leg Monkey Tree Frogs, and Clown Tree Frogs. These amazing guys have (respectively) bright orange and black stripes on their legs, or are a beautiful maroon with yellow spots.

We still have our captive-bred baby Red-Eyed Tree Frogs, our Vietnam Blue Tree Frogs, Green Tree Frogs, and captive-bred Oriental Fire-Bellied Toads.  If there are any other species you are looking for, please let us know by visiting our Contact Us page.  Filling out the contact form will also put you on the list for our email newsletter.

We’ll also have all the goodies to go along with our terrarium kits: coco huts, coconut panels (great for backgrounds), grape vine, driftwood, live plants, submersible filters, heat cables and all that great stuff.

 And, of course we will have our fruit fly cultures as Blaptica dubia roaches – adults and nymphs.  These guys are one of the best feeders on the market, and have the highest meat-to-shell ratio of any feeder insects.

 We look forward to seeing everybody at the shows in January!

We’ll also have some marbled, golden, and a tokay gecko with really low prices; plenty of fruit fly cultures; more Blaptica dubia nymphs and adult pairs, as well as food, water gel, and roach flats; springtail colonies; the frogs mentioned in our previous post, and a ton of cage furnishings, including grapevine, eucalyptus root driftwood, and driftwood stumps; submersible filters; hydroton (great for a light-weight drainage layer); and our special long-lasting substrate mixture that’s perfect for naturalistic frog vivariums.

I hope we can fit everything on two tables …

Looking forward to seeing you all,
Jim

We are excited about some of the new stuff we will have on the table, including naturalistic terrarium supplies – including an entire starter kit, new frogs – including African big-eyed tree frogs (Leptopelis vermiculatus), and more.

For more information about the West Michigan Reptile Expo, check out the website http://www.reptile-expo.com/