Kobatron Exotica is written by one keeper in Japan, for keepers everywhere.
I’ve kept reptiles and amphibians for a long time now — carpet pythons for about ten years, and a good range of other species alongside them over the years: corn snakes, green tree pythons, paradise flying snakes, gopher snakes, kingsnakes, and Japanese ratsnakes; monitors, including Varanus similis and Carl Schmidt’s monitor; bearded dragons and leopard geckos; and on the amphibian side, dart frogs, White’s tree frogs, and axolotls. I’ve also bred carpet pythons twice. Neither round could be called a clean success — egg management is genuinely hard, and I lost more than I’d have liked — but I learned more from what went wrong than from what went right, and a lot of that ends up here.
I’m not a professional breeder or a researcher. I’m one keeper who has kept a lot of animals for a long time. So what you’ll find on this site is a mix: settled facts where they’re settled, views drawn from experience where the hobby hasn’t reached consensus, and honest “I don’t know” where I don’t. I’d rather flag the edges of what I know than paper over them.
Why this site exists
There’s surprisingly little material that pulls the practical side of keeping certain species together in one place — husbandry, localities, morphs, genetics, naming — and what exists is scattered, in English and in Japanese alike. As a keeper I kept looking the same things up again and again. This site is my attempt to put some of it together properly, from the point of view of someone who actually keeps these animals rather than someone summarizing what others have written.
Where I recommend equipment or supplies, some of those links are affiliate links — see the affiliate disclosure for details. That never changes what I recommend; the point of the site is to be useful first.
A note on husbandry advice
Everything here is written from my own keeping in my own conditions. Animals differ, setups differ, and climates differ — Japan is not Arizona is not Queensland. Treat what I write as a starting point to weigh against your own animal and your own vet, not as a rulebook. In the end it always comes down to what works for that particular animal.
Questions, corrections, or just want to compare notes? A contact page is on the way. Until then, the more of us who share what we’re seeing, the better we all get at reading these animals.
— Kobatron