Dianna
Second Instar
I wanted to share my experience with the Oaks reptile expo for those in the area of Pennsylvania/New Jersey.
There are very few reptile expos (and even fewer invert expos) in the north east—surprisingly. The Oaks show is the only one available around me (being from South Jersey). I went two years ago for the first time and enjoyed it, as the convention hall was properly filled with vendors of all kinds. Of course, the main attraction is reptiles, and therefore a large majority of the vendors sold reptiles, but there was always a section for invertebrates, including tarantulas, true spiders, beetles, mantids, scorpions, millipedes, centipedes, and even crabs. Overall there was a lot more to choose from at that time than now.
This time around, the vendors felt repetitive. The amount of gecko vendors was nearly suffocating, and if you weren't seeing geckos, you were seeing ball pythons with some diversity of snakes, with one or two tables selling exotic reptiles of all sizes. So as you can imagine, trying to filter through all of that to find invertebrates was tough. The most common invertebrate sold were tarantulas and isopods. Everything else you had to find by looking closely through the tables for sprinkled plastic cups of various inverts.
The roach stock was abysmal. You could see that none of the people selling them were part of the hobby or had a passion for them. There were a total of *two* vendors, not including the piles of feeder dubias, that sold roaches. The first table had Death Heads, Extinct Cave roaches, and Hissers, each being sold for $40 but I couldn't find a single one in each cup. The second vendor had unidentified Porcelain roaches and Tiger Hissers being sold for $30 and was labeled "sexed colony" but there was only one adult and a few different sized babies.
Clearly this is not an expo for invertebrate lovers let alone roach lovers. I understand roaches aren't popular in the invert-keeping community but I didn't expect that sad excuse of a showing of them. It's a reptile expo, not an invert expo, I understand, but inverts are very often lumped with reptiles in shows because the hobbies are so close. Is the roach hobby really that small? Do people really have no interest in them? I wouldn't mind stepping up to the plate and being the resident roach-keeper and seller for my area, but if no one else has stepped up already I'm assuming people don't have any interest in keeping them.
The shere lack of roach representation is surprising given the area I live in is extremely populated, so you'd think there'd be at least ONE proper representative. Idk. Maybe my perspective is misled by the minimal amount of shows I've been to but there aren't any other shows in the area. It's really disheartening.
What are your guys' thoughts?
There are very few reptile expos (and even fewer invert expos) in the north east—surprisingly. The Oaks show is the only one available around me (being from South Jersey). I went two years ago for the first time and enjoyed it, as the convention hall was properly filled with vendors of all kinds. Of course, the main attraction is reptiles, and therefore a large majority of the vendors sold reptiles, but there was always a section for invertebrates, including tarantulas, true spiders, beetles, mantids, scorpions, millipedes, centipedes, and even crabs. Overall there was a lot more to choose from at that time than now.
This time around, the vendors felt repetitive. The amount of gecko vendors was nearly suffocating, and if you weren't seeing geckos, you were seeing ball pythons with some diversity of snakes, with one or two tables selling exotic reptiles of all sizes. So as you can imagine, trying to filter through all of that to find invertebrates was tough. The most common invertebrate sold were tarantulas and isopods. Everything else you had to find by looking closely through the tables for sprinkled plastic cups of various inverts.
The roach stock was abysmal. You could see that none of the people selling them were part of the hobby or had a passion for them. There were a total of *two* vendors, not including the piles of feeder dubias, that sold roaches. The first table had Death Heads, Extinct Cave roaches, and Hissers, each being sold for $40 but I couldn't find a single one in each cup. The second vendor had unidentified Porcelain roaches and Tiger Hissers being sold for $30 and was labeled "sexed colony" but there was only one adult and a few different sized babies.
Clearly this is not an expo for invertebrate lovers let alone roach lovers. I understand roaches aren't popular in the invert-keeping community but I didn't expect that sad excuse of a showing of them. It's a reptile expo, not an invert expo, I understand, but inverts are very often lumped with reptiles in shows because the hobbies are so close. Is the roach hobby really that small? Do people really have no interest in them? I wouldn't mind stepping up to the plate and being the resident roach-keeper and seller for my area, but if no one else has stepped up already I'm assuming people don't have any interest in keeping them.
The shere lack of roach representation is surprising given the area I live in is extremely populated, so you'd think there'd be at least ONE proper representative. Idk. Maybe my perspective is misled by the minimal amount of shows I've been to but there aren't any other shows in the area. It's really disheartening.
What are your guys' thoughts?