All in all a great show with plenty of herps and accessories.
I went up to the Pomona Reptile Super Show at the Fairplex in Pomona to check out some of the interesting animals at the show. While many of these shows offer up your usual ball pythons, crested geckos, leopard geckos, sulcata tortoises and bearded dragons, rightly so, as they are currently the most popular pet reptiles, I went to the show hoping to find some different animals that could be the next best things.
I wasn’t disappointed. While the aforementioned species are the bread and butter of the reptile hobby, I saw several animals that are just as stunning, just not as popular. These included hognose snakes, kingsnakes, corn snakes, an interesting crested gecko/Chahoua hybrid, and a stunning collection of bull snake morphs produced by Jason Nelson of Envy Reptiles.
One purveyor had a collection of various Anolis species, which are always cool, and one vendor even had Jackson’s chameleons for $50, which reminds me of the Jackson’s chameleon for sale ($10) sign on the North Shore of O’ahu. There was even a vendor selling a “Hawaiian” blue day gecko (gold dust) for $700! These guys are all over O’ahu, just not blue.
There were several custom reptile enclosure manufacturers as well as multiple plant vivarium vendors as more folks are working to get their animals into enclosures that better mimic their environments. Sunday was busy with a lot of people and the vendors had nice selections of reptiles, amphibians, and inverts. It was great to see how busy the show was and everyone I spoke with were happy that the hobby is getting more popular. Families with children were represented in full force and each of the booths had people on hand to answer questions.
