My Weekly Exotic Pet Care Routine!

On the weekend, most people probably stay at home in comfy clothes, maybe watch some movies, and overall just relax. For me, the weekend means taking care of our animals at home, so welcome to my weekly routine on the weekends. I like to start the weekend in the bird room where we have peekaboo! We have Chaka's cage and Cheyenne's cage, which need cleaning, as you can see, and I get a lot of help. Don't chew on your sister's tail. I get a lot of help when it Yes, you're gonna be a big helper. Cheyenne's cage is clean. That was easy, and I don't use newspaper like a lot of bird owners do. I think the bedding kind of makes the cage look cleaner throughout the week. It hides messes more, basically, so I use the Sunseed Fresh World Bedding. Not a sponsor, that's just what I use, and I think it looks nice. The only problem is by using this, sometimes bird owners are less to clean the cage as often as they should because it hides the mess so well, so I have a very strict every weekend clean the bird cages rule. Yeah, ain't that right? Now Cheyenne's cage does not take long to clean because she's actually a very clean macaw. She doesn't make much of a mess, and when she does destroy her toys or poop, everything just kind of falls straight down, so it's easy just to clean out without having to wipe down all the bars of her cage. Chaka, on the other hand, is a menace and makes a huge mess every week, both on the trays, on the bars. Somehow, where was it? There was some poop. Somehow she poops on the outside of her cage. That takes talent, and there's always poop on the perches as well. I've strategically, like, positioned all of her perches so that there's the least amount of fallen poop possible that lands from up above, so it's not a whole lot more, but she's a messy bird, so that requires pulling the whole cage out, changing the bedding, wiping down the trays, and wiping down all the bars too. So that's what I'm going to do next. You may be asking yourself, why doesn't she just pull out these trays and dump it out? And although that is easier on smaller bird cages, in my experience with the big macaw cages, it's really just easier to go in and scoop it out with a dust-permanent pan, honestly. Come here. Now I get to wipe down the rest of the bars, took out the perches that had poop on them, so those are soaking at the moment, and maybe I'll change up some toys at the ends too. But first, you have to wipe off all your poop. Phew, all the bars are wiped down. I wipe them all down, even if they don't have poop on them, because birds are very dusty, so I just try to wipe everything to keep it clean every week. I also got someone a new toy. Someone named Chaka has been destroying this crate that's been on top of her cage for the past month or so, so it's it's time to give her something new. Are you already checking it out? What is this? Is this a new play gym for you? I think it's supposed to be a wine rack, but not for a macaw owner. Come here, check this out. Oh, and you're going over there. Here, I think you're gonna like this. You can play while I keep cleaning. It's clean. However, there's also a bird play stand in our house. This is from Goodwill. It's a new toy for Chaka to destroy, even though it turns out she much prefers wood pieces, but that's okay. She can play with the truck. Anyway, now I get to repeat the entire process with the play stand. Now that bird cages are done and the play stand is clean, it's time for a little afternoon snack for the birds. You can have it right here. Today, we've got some chops, some boiled eggs, some grapes, blueberries, generic fruit, I guess I should say, and all sorts of tasty things. After the snack, Chaka usually gets pretty sleepy and needs a nap, so I take that time to clean the venomous snakes. We have our copperhead and cottonmouth hybrid there, who pooped in his water. Awesome. We have room service, our southern pacific rattlesnakes somewhere in here, but we're going to be taking him out and cleaning. Got the pair of massasaugas in here, who's basking light burnt out, so I have to take care of that. And we have a water moccasin temporarily up here as well. So with Chaka distracted and asleep, I'm going to take care of the venomous stuff. Next, I have to do a water change on the fish tank. We have a just over 200 gallon freshwater tank at home, mostly containing barbs and other semi-aggressives, but what else do we have in here? We've got some electric blue arasari cichlids, which are gorgeous. Got some denison's barbs or rosaline sharks, depending on what you want to call them. Some fun loaches, including some clowns. Oh, we've got some gold barbs. We have some dumb giant danios that I don't like, but Ed loves, so we have them for him. And a variety of plecos and other things. So we're going to do a water change on this guy. I'll need Ed's help in removing the hood, and then I kind of work from top down. I'm going to take off these glass lids, there's three of them, and then clean those off. And then I can finally get down into the water and do a water change. All right, we have our siphon. We use just a Python brand siphon. It's like a 75 foot long hose. We throw it outside to drain because dirty fish water is excellent plant fertilizer. So I'm going to basically take out the dirtiest water of the tank by siphoning out where the waste sits. Now, a lot of the waste is drained through and kind of sucked up by the filters underneath. And I have two canister filters on this guy. And typically I'll change these first if I'm going to do them, and then I do the water change. But today, canister filters don't need cleaning, so we're just going to leave those be. However, I do have to unplug them and all the other electronics before I start the water change, and then I can start siphoning it out. Oh, it's so satisfying. Look at it go. When I do a water change, I like to drain the water down to like, I don't know, 20% or so, which a lot of people don't recommend. But we have so much beneficial bacteria in here with the driftwood and the live plants that it is safe. It's not going to shock the fish. I've been doing it for years. I can bring the water level down quite a bit, and the fish are just fine. And I leave the fish in there, by the way. So a lot of people ask if you should take your fish out to do water changes, and they'll be fine. Just leave them in the tank. Anyway, it takes like an hour or so, maybe even longer, I can't, I haven't timed it before, to drain the water that far. So I have to listen to something. Usually I listen to podcasts during this time, a shout out to Proper Royals podcast. But since I'll be using my phone to film and I can't use it for our podcasts, I'm just gonna watch My Guilty Pleasure, which is anything Gordon Ramsay. In this case, Hell's Kitchen. As I progress and get the water level down and it's easier to access the glass, I start wiping down the glass because there's a little bit of algae built up on the inside sometimes. I try to every couple days kind of wipe off spots of silicates so the algae can't attach to it. But yeah, I kind of clean up the glass too while I go. And then once the water is all the way down, and I can reach the plants more easily, then I trim up and prune the plants. Put the hood back on, the water change is done. It looks a little cloudy, but it'll clear up in a couple hours. And oh my gosh, she's still alive! We still have Sacrificial Guppy! Yeah! Okay, the uh, the speckles on her, that's not ick, they're air bubbles that happens every time. Don't worry guys. That, boys and girls, is Sacrificial Guppy. Her job was to tell us when the baby softshell turtle we put in here was too big to play nice with other fish and had to move to the zoo. We figured Gordita, the softshell, would eat her because she's the slowest moving fish in here. But no, Gordita had to eat one of my favorite arsari cichlids. Oh did she really? Yeah, that's why there's only three and not four. So Sacrificial Guppy lives and the turtle is now I'm surprised one of them hasn't eaten him. I thought for sure she would have gotten eaten by one of those cichlids, but not yet. And finally, I have to take care of the random animals that we happen to be fostering for our rescue. In today's case, that happens to be a baby caiman alligator. Where are you? Let's see. Are you under here? Yep, there you are. Here he is. Little caiman, he's adorable. I've been trying to leave him alone as much as possible so that he stops freaking out around humans. But as you can see, it's just bad enough that this this needs a cleaning. So friend, I'm sorry. I don't want to be the bad guy, but can I leave? Nope. Yep, that's what I thought. Okay, well I'm gonna have to find a stress-free way to scoop him out and clean this bin. Ta-da! That is much better. I pruned the plants, did a water change, kind of scrubbed everything down, cleaned off all the driftwood and fake plants, and added a big basking rock to kind of hold down this one because it's hollow so it likes to float. So this will help kind of waterlog it. But in the meantime, it provides a nice little hidey gap down there. So I think he'll like that. We also have our basking light, which I still have to lower, and our UVB light. So I think we're ready to put him back. Sorry I put you in a bucket. I know. Oh, you're so angry. Hi buddy. It's okay. Oh, baby grunts. Look at those big, oh, big eyes. Oh, the baby grunts. It's okay, friend. Here, you got something on your foot. Let me throw that in there. Oh my gosh, you are adorable. Yeah, you are. Okay, here you go. Gonna put you back in the water. Yep, yep, yep. I know, now you're gonna hate me all over again, but I promise it's clean now. Yeah, I'll give you some live minnows in a bit so you can chow down on those. Oh, you are so cute. I know, you hate me. Whoo, and we are done cleaning for another week. This is the reality when it comes to owning exotic animals, from fish to birds. I guess not everybody has the venomous snakes and the baby alligator in their house, but these guys require a ton of time and energy to keep them healthy and happy, and it is 100% worth it. I wouldn't have it any other way. I hope today's video kind of gave you a glimpse into the life of Emily on her weekend, and I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for watching. Thank you to Crayonbackers for your amazing support, as always, and we'll see you next time.