Welcome to Episode 9 of Season 2 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series, where I introduce a baby caiman to Pantdora’s blackwater pond, Aqua Noctis, in a thrilling attempt to manage its insect population—an unforgettable and life-changing adventure!

I added a baby crocodilian to my giant ecosystem rainforest vivarium, Pantdora. The purpose was to address the many random insects that fall into and drown in the rainforest’s blackwater pond ‘Aqua Noctis’, and my hopes was that a baby caiman could eat them. The adventure of discovery that ensued was unpredictable, unforgettable, and utterly life-changing. Hope you enjoy this Episode 9 of Season 2 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series.

I Added a Baby Crocodile Into My Giant Rainforest Vivarium

This is my 1000-gallon cloud rainforest vivarium, I call Pantdora, and its aim is to study the epic lives of the vast array of creatures, plants, and fungi living within it. But on one fateful night, the rainforest was not quite the same, and an ominous scene was unfolding for someone stranded in the waters.

“Now where am I?” said the roach as it waved its antennae around, smelling the swampy air. It was laying on its back on the surface of the water. It was dark, and it couldn’t see anywhere it could properly grip to help flip it over. But something just didn’t feel right. Its roachy senses were telling it not to move, but after laying there for several minutes, it decided to ignore its instincts and attempted to flip itself over so it could swim to the closest shore. Little did it know, it would be the last decision it would ever make, for Pantdora had been forever changed with the addition of the greatest beast I ever dared to place into our giant rainforest vivarium of Pantdora. Welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel.

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Of all the animals I’ve ever owned in my life, and there have been a lot, crocodilians were always just one of those creatures that I enjoyed watching on screen but preferred to leave to animal pros like Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin to get up close and personal with them, so I didn’t have to. I knew they were important predators in an ecosystem, but they were scary-looking and weren’t particularly the most beautiful beasts. In my mind, you needed to be a whole level of crazy to care for a crocodilian, and I always felt nothing would ever compel me to try.

That was until I met Dingo Dinkelman, South African wildlife educator and animal park owner, who specializes in often dangerous beasts like these Nile crocodiles. I recently hosted Dingo and his family at my place, and upon checking out Pantdora, he looked into Aqua Noctis, the blackwater pond, and wondered why I hadn’t added a caiman into the waters. Upon which I told him that I couldn’t possibly house one because Aqua Noctis was surely not enough room for one, to which, to my surprise, he informed me that Aqua Noctis was indeed enough space for not one but two baby crocodilians, as the smaller quarters meant that they would ensure the babies find their food, and that the pond would be enough space for quite some time since they are slow growers. After all, a SWAMP vivarium was on my future to-do list, and I did have a 60 ft pond and sunken garden in my yard to rehome it once it did grow to its max size of about 6 ft. After discussing the topic further with Dingo, I came to the realization that this might actually be an opportunity to learn more about them, and boy, I didn’t know it yet, but was I up for the most intense learning experience of my life!

I opened the containment box to gaze at our new baby beast for the very first time. I felt like I had just opened the containment unit of a newly arrived velociraptor, a dangerous creature that stared at me with the most intense eyes I’d ever seen. This was a baby, captive-born spectacled caiman, measuring about 8 inches in length. I couldn’t get over the look of its scales, its body shape, its paddle-like tail, and its helmet-like head. It was time for a little quarantine. Come with me, my friend.

I placed it into a tub, where I would keep it for the first couple of days for observation. I had Dingo help me with determining its sex, and this is what he revealed. “AntsCanada, you’ve got a boy. Look over there. You see that little dot at the front there? That’s his little hemi-penile over there, so this is a little male spectacled caiman. Congratulations, you have a boy!” So he was a male. What should we name him, AC Family? Let me know in the comments so we can vote on an official name for this little guy.

Over the next couple of days, I allowed the beast to rest and get accustomed to the conditions of the Ant Room, and then when I was ready, I pulled off the mesh top and discovered that the creature had pooped. Oh, is that what caiman poop looks like? I expected it to be much messier. Oh, this was good because where he was about to go, I had just the organisms to help deal with these kinds of biological messes.

This is Aqua Noctis, Pantdora’s blackwater pond system, full of fish, snails, crabs, and plants that grow inside the water. Aside from a simple filter under the rock pile, the plants and vines that set their roots into the waters actually feed off the toxic nitrates produced by the poop from the animals, as well as decaying material like drowned insects in the water. In fact, drowned insects have always been a problem in these waters, and until now, the fish and crabs dealt with them. But now with a new caiman frequenting the waters, I hoped it could be the solution I was looking for regarding these drowned insects, since these caiman specialize in eating insects at this young age. Well, there was only one way to find out. To prepare the waters for our caiman, I added a new layer of floating mini frogbit to give the surface of the water a little coating of greenery so our caiman would feel more at home in case he needed a little cover.

OK, oh caiman! Just come with me. I needed to be confident and strong. I moved down to scoop the baby up, but it instantly shot away, and I jumped back at its sudden burst. Confidence went completely out the window! I tried my best to muster up the courage to move in again in a swift and careful way, until suddenly…

“Back off if you love your fingers!” It threatened me with an open mouth, then shot away once again. It continued to lunge at me with jaws wide open. This was one vicious crocodilian! Even Dingo’s son Rex made handling it look so easy, but in this moment, I was terrified! Ok, change of plan: I went in with the caiman’s container and scooped him up. It glared at me, sporting its row of tiny razor-sharp teeth, advertising how painful my future would be if I tested it! What a monster from the swamps of hell! OK, my caiman, don’t worry; you’ll be safe now. Where you are going shall be your new watery domain to rule.

The caiman stared at me the whole time, ready to bite my head off. I opened the side door and then carefully placed him into the water, and as Aqua Noctis swallowed him up, he escaped, descending into the depths of his new home. I looked down and spotted him parked onto the pond floor. He stood perfectly still in the tinted waters, and it was almost as though time itself had also stood still. It was in this quiet moment that it seemed our caiman became one with the pond.

And then, suddenly, he began to move. Ever so slowly, he tilted upwards towards the surface and began to ascend. My heart stood still, mesmerized and in a trance, as I watched our new dragon of Aqua Noctis float his way in real-life slow motion up to the surface.

This was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen! Not five minutes ago, I saw it as a demonic creature, but now, it looked like an angel in reptilian form, ascending into a paradise above. Little bubbles began releasing from its nostrils, and it was then that I was reminded how this animal, though largely aquatic, still respired air. And then, when it was ready, it shot up and took in its first gasp of refreshing Pantdoran oxygen. Aqua Noctis now hosted the largest animal to ever enter Pantdora.

What a sight! And it was from this moment on that I was forever changed. My overall view on crocodilians had officially gone from just an “OK cool” animal, to one of nature’s most stunning creations on the planet. The guppies swam around, unharmed and unfazed by the new dragon in town. For the next several minutes, I watched in awe as our new caiman lay suspended there, like its prehistoric ancestors had done in swamps and waters for two hundred million years, since the dinosaurs, and my spirit was moved to witness our new caiman settling in.

I now couldn’t wait to watch our dragon finally feed, and the truth was, there was plenty of food for him here in Pantdora, but this is where things took an unexpected turn.

Pantdora, as always, was exploding with miniature life at every corner of the vivarium, especially in the soils. In this little plot of ground was a whole community of critters all doing their great work at breaking down biological material. I could see millipedes, springtails, gnome ants, snails, mites, and worms all breaking down what looks to me like a dead cricket carcass. All of these detritivores are important to help return nutrients back into the soils of the rainforest. I also loved seeing these important cleanup masters, isopods. During the first animal population event, I had placed in a few hundred of these isopods of different colour phases, and it was interesting to see that after several generations of interbreeding, a lot of them still had their very unique colours. I was happy to see that the isopods were also doing quite well. Evidence of all the great work from the detritivores was really seen in the plant life of Pantdora, which had exploded in a flurry of greens, reds, and yellows. Wherever you turned, the plants were completely monopolizing the ground space like a rainforest would during its wet season, which I officially launched.

Oh, speaking of which, I had some new critters to add! Let’s do that now. Due to the rains, I found more of these awesome big brown scarab beetles, which I learned are from the genus Leucopholis, and another one of these gorgeous jewel scarab beetles. These beetles were so pretty, and sadly, I wasn’t able to add that many beetles when I first built Pantdora six months ago, because at the time it wasn’t their season. I was happy to find more of them now, so they could hopefully mate and get a good population of them going in Pantdora. Oops!

I spotted golden carpenter ants frolicking in the asparagus ferns, licking the surfaces of the leaves of the sweet honeydew that was being excreted by the mealybugs. I’m actually glad I chose to not actively try to eradicate the mealybugs from the plants, even if a lot of people urged me to, because in the wild, many ants depend on plant insects like mealybugs as a primary sugar source, and as you can see, the plants still aren’t really suffering from them being around.

In fact, the honeydew as a natural resource was the cause of some serious growing tensions between an old ant superpower and a new one.

A Crematoblaster, acrobat ant, was racing back and forth incessantly along the vines, sounding the alarm. Something had upset the acrobat ants. Newly invasive ghost ants, which have been appearing in our rainforest, breaking into the vivarium from the outside, have been showing up in greater numbers as of late. The Crematoblasters were not going to let the ghost ants steal their precious honeydew supply. “Get over here! Hey, where did you go? You shall never obtain our honeydew! Die, you ghostly heathens!”

Though much smaller, the ghost ants were extremely fast with the gift of speed. I needed to keep my eye on these ghost ants because they were quickly growing to be a nuisance in these forests and could ultimately outcompete our various native ants of Pantdora, or even possibly wipe them out.

In the last episode, the ghost ants were stealing newly laid eggs from our new weaver ant queen, but thankfully, our new queen was now tending to a little pile of eggs, which was great to see. I couldn’t wait for a new colony of weaver ants in our rainforest to move into the leaves and create their iconic leaf basket nests in the canopy.

Speaking of which, as you may have seen in our previous video, I am working on the next expansion to Pantdora, a canopy vivarium, which has officially begun construction. Have a look at the structure. It’s so big! This vivarium will be bigger than Pantdora and will be designed to simulate Pantdora’s canopy or treetop layer of the forest. I cannot wait to get started on building it once the glass finally arrives in 2 weeks. The glass panel on the floors has already been removed, and the final step of the construction will be the building of the glass bridge that will join this upper Canopy Vivarium to Pantdora below it! I was so excited for what was to come! It would be soon, AC Family, and I knew the added extension would be super beneficial to our rainforest ecosystem.

But in terms of Pantdora now, I did want to know that our caiman was fulfilling its important purpose of controlling populations of drowned insects in our pond. I wanted to watch the caiman eat, and this was important because a caiman that eats is a good indicator of health and adaptation to its new surroundings. I watched as crickets crawled all around the rock shelf adjacent to the pond, but after hours of waiting, no cricket had fallen in, and I couldn’t help but decide to try feeding it myself. I grabbed one of the crickets from the rock shelf and opened the door to drop it into the water, but as soon as I approached, the caiman sank away below the water’s surface.

In the tinted waters, it remained suspended and not moving. It clung to the vine roots and waited patiently. I admired how well adapted these caimans were to life in the water. Its ability to slip away at the first sign of danger was a very good survival tactic. It rested beautifully motionless as fish danced all around it, and then, after a few minutes, it began to ascend, and I watched the water to see its head emerge, but to my surprise, it didn’t. What? Where did it go? Upon closer inspection, I noticed it had just surfaced the very tip of its nose. Genius! It refused to make itself visible by remaining underwater while only exposing the very tip of its nose so it could breathe through its nostrils. Clever boy! The caiman remained in this submerged position for the next hour or so, and I decided to drop the cricket in anyway, hoping the croc would come and swipe at it, but instead, the cricket immediately swam to the nearest sight of dry land, ultimately crawling up onto this wooden island where it remained trapped for the next several hours. I anticipated that perhaps, with it being daytime, the caiman wasn’t exactly hungry, as these animals are active by night. But I knew this cricket would be eaten as soon as night fell, but what ended up happening was not what I expected at all.

Night fell in Pantdora, and the mists emerged to blanket the lands. I love the calming sight of our rainforest at night.

You know, sometimes there are moments in Pantdora when things get real intense, but those times get balanced when the rainforest’s spirit brings about a peace and a beauty I can’t really put into words, most apparent at night. It’s in these moments I feel grateful for having created Pantdora.

The cricket was still stranded on the wood. The caiman was still hovering below the surface. Perhaps it had taken a nap. If only it looked above the surface, it would be able to see the stranded cricket and eat it. I felt like I was watching a goat being fed to a T-rex in Jurassic Park. The cricket decided to grab and munch on some floating plants. It had grown hungry. Suddenly, a nearby vine started to move. The caiman was moving below the surface, and I spotted the caiman’s nose subtly emerge and float closer to the island. It was watching the cricket. Then, it went under. Was it going to shoot out to grab it from below like a shark? The suspense was killing me as I waited with bated breath.

But to my surprise, the caiman had moved here far from the cricket. What? Guess it wasn’t interested? It surfaced and waited there. I was concerned that our caiman wasn’t eating, but he had just moved in and was probably still acclimating to his new surroundings. At least from this spot, he could snatch insects crawling in from the bank. Various insects were always falling in, and so this was a pretty good spot for him to catch food. Caiman are ambush predators and have all the patience in the world to just sit there and wait for the perfect prey item to come walking by.

It was then that I noticed the cricket on the island had disappeared. Guess it jumped or swam to safety. Later that night, I noticed a roach had fallen in and swam directly to the branch right in front of the caiman. It climbed the branch just a jaw shot away from the caiman. Oh man, it had to eat now. It was so close! The roach climbed, and then suddenly the caiman looked at it. Oh, would it chomp?! Awww, it allowed the roach to slip away. I guess it truly wasn’t willing to eat right now. Poor croc. I felt it was perhaps scared and unsure about its new surroundings. Failure to eat could also mean he was sick and needed to be checked out by a vet. I didn’t know it yet, but I would soon get the answers I was looking for, but not quite in a way I expected.

This reluctance to feed continued the next day. This juvenile cricket was on the mesh, and when it fell in, it swam around a bit then climbed its way out of the water via the vines. Now, where was the caiman today? It took me a while to spot him, but I finally did. He was nestled in the shadows under the rock shelf. I spotted his devilish reptilian eye peering from within the darkness! I so wished I could read his mind. Was he stressed? Was the water not suitable? Was he feeling sick? I didn’t know, but later that evening, I decided to try one more time and place a small roach on the surface of the water. It lay motionless, floating along the frogbit. Of course, the caiman did not bite, but later that night, I was in for quite the surprise and an answer to all my concerns.

In the night, the roach still lay there on its back. “Now where am I?” said the roach as it waved its antennae around, smelling the swampy air. It was dark, and it couldn’t see anywhere it could properly grip to help flip it over.

Wait a sec. Couldn’t see…? Then it suddenly occurred to me. Maybe the caiman wasn’t eating because it could clearly see me hovering around like a helicopter parent at kindergarten. Perhaps he was too shy to eat in my presence. I then made the executive decision to just allow my camera to roll, and step away from the vivarium.

And after about 3 minutes of my absence, this is what happened the moment the roach decided to move. From the other end of the room, I thought I had heard a slap in the water, but it was so subtle I wasn’t sure, and sure enough, checking back on the footage, indeed the roach had disappeared in an instant! Let’s watch that again in slow motion. Did you see the caiman? Man, it was lightning fast! And look! I peeked at him under the rock shelf and I could see that the roach was still in his mouth, and although I didn’t clearly catch the caiman eating, this was all I needed to see really. Our croc just wanted to feed in private. Just knowing he was finally eating in Pantdora was a clear sign that he was settling right into his new kingdom. Aqua Noctis had officially welcomed our new dragon to its home waters. And things only got better from here.

A couple of days later, I spotted our caiman sleeping soundly against the glass, almost completely submerged save for just a tiny point of contact between the air and its nostrils, so it could breathe. He looked so cute, and I was happy he was comfortable enough now to sleep up against the glass like this. I also noticed that his belly was so full! Don’t worry! I checked the frogs and sun skinks, and they were all still alive and well. I wasn’t worried because baby caimans only eat insects at this age, and maybe tiny pinkie mice. But for now, he had eaten a lot of insects and was much better nourished now than when he first arrived, and as I watched him sleep, completely at peace with his place and aquatic companions sharing the vivarium, I realized that he was not the savage monster I initially thought he was.

I grinned seeing him smile as he slept, and realized that behind the beastly exterior was an innately gentle creature that only when threatened will fight tooth and claw in self-defense. I mean, wouldn’t you? But if given the choice, it was clear that our caiman would much rather retreat and hide. I visited a zoo this week and was able to check out some adult spectacled caimans, which was pretty cool. They were about 5 feet long and 8 years of age but were not as large as I imagined adults might be in my head. I was told that as adults, they are dangerous, but like our baby caiman, would much rather swim away at the opportunity of an altercation, which is more than one could say for their much larger relatives, the Nile and saltwater crocs. My buddy Dingo is insane for this, but as a wildlife educator, sharing knowledge on these animals serves a very important purpose in the world, and that is, to help spread a greater awareness of these very misunderstood animals.

You see, although the spectacled caiman isn’t an endangered species, as of 2022, seven other crocodilian species were classified as endangered and four species vulnerable, due mostly to habitat loss through logging, drainage of wetlands, urbanization, and pollution. Many crocodilians are killed through other human activities like dynamite fishing in their natural habitat. The thought of innocent crocs like our baby here being blasted out of existence from their swamp homes just breaks my heart into a thousand pieces. That can be stopped, with your support for organizations dedicated to the conservation of crocodilians globally and spreading what you’ve learned about crocodilians to others. They are important predators in the ecosystems they are from, and though I never imagined I’d ever be a caregiver to a caiman, now that I was, I was determined to provide our new baby dragon the best home I possibly could, for the rest of his life, and to make sure his presence under our care would not go in vain, for the sake of all the angel-like crocodilians of the world.

On the window sill lay the holding container of a retired Emperor, Emperor Silverio, who having passed his greatest life test and fulfilled his purpose by breeding with an Em