AMAZONAS
added to make a small terrarium or fishbowl), and
a line of foods we made in house. We developed the
Reptile Rock Heater, which mimicked a place where a
lizard or snake would come to heat up its intestines in
order to digest its dinner. We made this product our-
selves, from winding the coil-heating element to mix-
ing the cement. We even made special ovens to cook
moisture out of the stones and accelerate the drying.
1993 was a big year for Zoo Med—we developed the
very first UVB reptile lamp in the world. I got the idea
from a former Cal Zoo employee, Jil Whitcomb, who
was raising juvenile green iguanas at the time. Some
people just have a gift with animals, and Jil was one
of them. She kept her iguanas in an open wire cage
for airflow, provided arboreal structures so they could
climb, fed them the correct diet, and provided a range
of temperature zones, including a hot basking site.
She even kept the cage next to a glass sliding door to
capture indirect sunlight.
Everything seemed perfect, but at the age of eight
months all the iguanas starting losing muscle mass in
their hind legs and perished a month or so later from
metabolic bone disease. Iguanas are major sun-basking
lizards in the wild, and I had a hunch that regular glass
was filtering out the benefits of sunlight. My research
confirmed this, and I also discovered that what these
animals were missing in captivity was the ultra violet
B (UVB) component in sunlight. If you looked all over
the world for a UVB lamp in 1993 you would find it in
only one place—the United States. The lamp was de-
signed for the indoor suntanning industry; now I had
to figure out how I could apply this type of lamp to
reptiles. After researching UVB safety and the way
reptiles process UVB/Vitamin D3 in their blood-
streams, we produced our first reptile UVB lamp, the
ReptiSun UVB 310.Milestone inventions
When the lamp went to market in 1993,
nobody understood why they needed it
and why it cost more than conventional
lights, so we had very poor sales the first
year despite an extensive education pro-
gram. Our competition quickly produced
knockoffs, but because they had little
or no understanding of the physics of
our lamp, they simply stuck “reptile UVB
lamp” stickers on their aquarium lamps.
For the next trade show we designed
a “light box” into which we put every
company’s reptile UVB lamp. Using a UVB
meter, we showed customers at our booth
that our lamp was the only one that put
out any significant amount of UVB.
Other milestones for Zoo Med in the
1990s were our new line of reptile foods in
retorted cans, ReptiBark substrate, basking
heat lamps, natural grass iguana foods, a natural mite
remedy, ReptiSafe water conditioner, and the first
canned insects for the reptile industry (Can O’s). In
2000, my fish hobbyist gene could not stand it any
longer, and we added a full line of aquarium lamps.
We came out with floating Turtle Docks in 2003 and
made sure we had a patent, as this turned out to be a
great product for Zoo Med and even won “product of
the year” from one of our largest customers. Some of
the other products in this decade were an automatic
misting machine (ReptiRain), an automatic live bug
catcher (BugNapper), Vita-Sand (substrate), and float-
ing turtle and aquarium logs.
At one point Zoo Med had 16 warehouses in San
Luis Obispo County, partly because we grew and partly
because our small town did not have any buildings
large enough to house our business. We finally moved
into the 140,000-square-foot warehouse we have to-
day, and another 60,000-square-foot building offsite.Pet nirvana
Being a hobbyist myself, I like to surround myself
with like-minded serious enthusiasts and animals.
Zoo Med’s customer service people are unique in that
they are all hobbyists and use phone headsets while
taking customer service calls so they can simultane-
ously maintain our company collection of rare turtles,
tortoises, tropical fishes, and amphibians. In fact, in
2009 we built a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse we
call “Turtle Nirvana” that is home to all our breedingllt i fihb l) dy
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tTop: The main Zoo Med
warehouse.
Right: This ad to
promote our terrarium
cage disinfectants
featured a “surfing
iguana.”