This is a toebiter. Yeah, might sound funny, but these little bugs live in lakes and spend all day eating everything they lay their eyes on. And to humans, they're known for injecting venom into toes, causing extreme amounts of pain.
So, I found this website that will sell me some to keep as pets. Yep. I'm going to build them a home in this fish tank.
Let's buy two of these. Let's see how this goes. And you already know the delivery drivers worked overtime to get these to me as soon as possible.
So, I cut it open so I could get out the containers. Supposedly, the bugs were inside. >> All right, let's see these.
Oh, shoot. No, this thing's massive. Since it was kind of hard to get a good look at them in these containers, I got out this temporary tank and put them in.
I was very careful because supposedly these guys have wings, meaning they could just fly out to my toes and start biting them if I wasn't careful. Anyways, now we can really see how absolutely vicious these guys are with their insanely sharp pincher forceps that they actually use to latch on to prey in the wild. Then using a little sharp mouthpiece they have, they inject a special type of venom into prey that turns the inside of their body into liquid that they then proceed to slurp up like a smoothie.
Yeah, I really hope these guys don't escape while making this video. But anyways, let's just build them a home and keep them as pets. This can't go well.
But the first step is to make the background of their home. To make this look good, I wanted to put this black board along the back. That way, the tank would have more of this dark feel that matches how creepy the toe biters are.
Then, I got out some spray foam. Yep. Wouldn't be a terra green video without it.
But this time, I used the foam to connect all these pieces of cork bark along the back to add some sort of natural feel to it. I even went and covered all the excess spray foam with some dirt so it wouldn't be as ugly. But the coolest thing is, as you can see, is I actually hid some of these plant pots along the top.
Basically, it's going to allow me to plant some beautiful plants in here. And it's just going to be super luscious by the end of the video, probably. But to really complete this backdrop, we need to add these.
These are called sticks. Yep. And we're going to put these along the back wall.
If you didn't know, sticks are really cool cuz they grow from trees, and they're actually made of wood. I'm just kidding, guys. I know you guys all know what sticks are.
I don't know why I'm explaining this. Anyways, yeah, I put so many of these sticks along the back because I really wanted to make this place look like some underwater mangro swamp with so many roots everywhere. I'm already loving how this is coming together.
And we're not even on step two, which is actually to make the floor and decorations. For this build, I just wanted to use this simple gravel material for the floor. But along with it, I've also got this, which I've never actually used before.
It's a little underground cave that goes up against the glass. Basically, after we go and fill up the rest of this floor with gravel, you can see this cave stays as an open area that stuff can go inside. And maybe our toe biters will come and chill in here, or maybe some of the prey we add will come and hide in here for as long as they can, of course.
Now, you're probably wondering why I didn't add any of this aqua soil like I usually do. And well, that's because I'm not going to put any sort of plants in here this time. Instead, I want it to look like some abandoned swampy area with super murky water.
And we do that by putting a ton of natural materials around like this big driftwood piece coming out the middle, and then a bunch of smaller stuff like these dead leaves, some mini pine cones, and little sticks. But most importantly, I've got some beta miracle leaves. Oh, yeah.
I don't I don't know why they're called miracle leaves, but hopefully they spread some sort of miracle around the tank. Something like that, surely. But actually, I kind of do know why these are called miracle leaves.
Because if I go and fill up this floor area with just a bit of water, you can see over the span of about an hour, it starts to turn into this brown murky color. That's because those leaves and all the other natural stuff I added inside is spreading around tannins in the water, which turns it this color. And it's actually super healthy for any fish or bugs that would live in here.
Dang, the more you know. Anyways, I drained that while I continued on with the build by putting in a few lava rocks and covering them in a bit of the spagnum moss, which I also put all over the background of the enclosure. Finally, the most important decoration is some little mini plastic boots.
Yeah, cuz we all know at the bottom of every lake and stuff, they just got like boots and stuff. At least that's what all the fishing games I've played have told me. Yeah, I got some pretty cool decorations as you can see.
Just going to put that there. Now, for my favorite part of each of these weird pet videos, the DIY decorations. And for the first one, let's make some pictures.
Yep. I literally went out and bought these mini dollhouse picture frames. I'm just going to scatter all around the enclosure with funny pictures of toebiters.
And to make some funny pictures, I got to do some photoshopping. I'm a Photoshop master, so this should go pretty well. First of all, I used my expert skills to make a picture of a toe biter eating one of its favorite foods ever, a frog.
Yes, they actually eat frogs in the wild. Then I made this picture of a toe biter flying in the air with beautiful angel wings because yeah, like I said, they can actually fly with their actual wings, but they don't look as majestical as these angel wings, of course. Finally, I found this picture of what it looks like when a toe biter lays eggs.
Yeah, apparently they literally keep them on their back until they hatch. So, I put a bunch of baby toe biters all around this mom toe. Then, we just got to go and print out these fantastical pictures.
And yes, I finally got a printer at my house, so I don't got to go to the store no more. And wait, no. What the heck is this, bro?
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I forgot you got to buy color for the ink.
Okay, I guess I got to go to the store anyways. Please do that, by the way. Uh, yeah.
So, I drove to the printing store to get the photos instead. Anyways, when I got home, I cut out all the little images and put them inside their frames. As you can see, I obviously have the ones I photoshopped, but I also found this picture of all the toe biters favorite foods, like insects and fish, so they can daydream about them all day.
And I also found this picture on Google of some crazy person who willingly let this thing bite him. Why the heck would you do that, bro? I don't know.
I just thought I had to put this in. Anyways, for the next DIY build, I'm going to make some signs. Yep.
I literally went out and bought all these random pieces of wood so I could burn some cool patterns on them with my super hot wood burning pen. With the first sign, I made it say, "Beware of the biter. " And I even put a little bit of eye emojis at the bottom.
You know, I just thought those look cool. And then on the second sign, I made it said, "Rest in peace to all the insects and fish that enter this tank. " Cuz as you know, toe biters do not take kindly to those kind of things.
Now, I could just go and put these inside of the tank. I kind of want them to look like signs. So, I got these sticks that I use for the background, which I'm going to go and hot glue to the back of them.
Once they dried, I stuck the two signs in the floor and got out the final sign that I was going to make a pattern on. This time, I stuck these little wooden letters onto the sign to write to biters. Then, I completely burned all the letters black so they stood out.
All right, let's just hang that right there. And oh, that's actually fire. Oh, hold on.
Wait, that's that's actually on fire. Oh. Oh, no.
I'm just kidding, guys. It's just uh some editing. Yeah, don't worry.
But it is actually fire. That's pretty cool. And now the build only needs one more thing.
Some plants to put in those pots that I had at the top of the enclosure. So, I drove to Walmart to buy them. Oh, yeah.
I haven't been to Walmart in so long. I already know they're going to have some fire plants. Bro, what is this?
Wait, this is the entire plant section? Yeah. I don't know what my Walmart is doing cuz why the heck is there only like five plants here?
None of these plants are even the right type and they would all die in the water. Come on Walmart. # bring back the plants.
Everyone comment that we actually got to bring back these plants. Anyways, I went home and instead just got out these terrarium plants I had sitting in my garage. Listen guys, I tried to go to Walmart.
I know you guys get mad at me whenever I don't, but hopefully this is good enough for you guys. And anyways, once the plants were inside, I filled it up with water. And as you can see, it turns super brown from all the tannins, of course, which is perfect.
That's exactly how I wanted it. And yep, this is now 100% complete. We don't need a filter or anything because toe biters are extremely resilient to water.
So, the next thing is to literally just get these guys inside. Okay, I got to be extremely cautious with this. I have no idea how I'm going to do this.
I'm just going to Okay, three, two, one. Quickly pick it up. Oh, they both fell off.
No, no, no. Okay, they're swimming around. I'm going to put this back in top so it'll fly out.
So I instead went with a different approach and moved the cork bark to the new tank and instead used this net to try and transport the toe biters without them flying away. Move, move, move, move. Okay, thankfully it was a little bit more successful.
So I did the same with the other toe biter. And you can see they both just swam straight down to grab onto something and they stayed completely still. But they do this for a purpose.
You see, toe biters have evolved to have the exact same pattern and shape as a dead leaf. and they stay completely still till some prey swims by them. Then they pounce on it.
So, you already know. Let's test three food sources with these guys. Starting with the smallest, which is actually meal worms, which I got right here.
Mealworms are one of the most common foods for the kind of pets I keep. So, I had a feeling these guys would definitely enjoy them. First of all, I dumped one in the water with some tweezers and waved around in front of this guy.
And instantly, he dashed off of his rock towards it. It actually scared me a bit, but he didn't even actually end up attacking the meal worm. So, when he found a new spot to go and rest, I did the same exact thing.
And this time, he struck at it, and he scared me so much, I actually dropped the tweezers with the worm. Uh, I don't know why this scared me. I'm literally using tweezers.
Uh, but yeah. Anyways, on the third attempt, this is what happens. He went and grabbed the meal worm with his claws, and he actually got a good grip with it.
Then, he brought out his sharp mouthpiece and started finding a good spot to poke into the worm with. Eventually, he made the bite. And as I said earlier, they inject a special digestive enzyme into their prey that turns the inside of them into a liquid that they then proceed to slurpfur up like a smoothie.
And yeah, this must have been a tasty, tasty smoothie. All right, I'm going to give muorms a 7 out of 10 because those toe biters liked them kind of a lot. But next up, we got an even bigger insect.
We got some roaches, baby. I think there's roaches in here. Oh, yeah.
Right there. You see them? I wanted to make this one quick.
So instantly I put one of these roaches in front of the second toe biter and almost immediately he pounced onto my tweezers totally and he just like would not let go. I think he didn't even see the roach. So I just knocked him off the tweezers and tried again.
This time he actually grabbed the roach. But he also grabbed onto my tweezers again and straight up just would not let go. So I kind of just set the tweezers down while he ate the roach.
And you can see this guy was also absolutely slurping this up and probably enjoying it a lot. All right. All right.
I'll give Roach his eight out of 10. It seemed like they like them a little bit more. But now it's time for the toe biters are real favorite food.
Or at least that's what I've heard. You see, insects are great and all, but in order for my toe biters to be healthy and thriving, they need to eat fish because that's what they eat in the wild mostly. And thankfully online, there's tons of websites that sell feeder fish just for this purpose.
So, I bought two of them so we can get our pet toebiters their proper nutritions. The next day, they got delivered, so I got them ready to feed. All right, let's do this.
And I even got my GoPro so I can get some nice underwater shots of these toe biters eating. Let's dump one of these fish inside. The fish that I had put inside immediately started swimming around.
But little did he know that this was the home of my pet toe biters which were secretly sitting right next to him watching his every move. And only a couple minutes later, he got a little too curious and started swimming near the toe biter. The toe biter was preparing to strike.
But he had to wait for the perfect opportunity in order to not scare the fish away. And when the moment was right, he pounced off the rocks and missed and scared it away. Bro, come on.
I thought you were a master hunter. So instead, 5 minutes later, I decided to just help him out by feeding him with some tweezers. There you go, boy.
Hope you enjoy. And yeah, this seemed like it was probably his favorite food, and he would not let go. Since it's easier and nicer to feed insects, I'll mostly stick to them, and I'll just have fish be a special occasion for when they need the proper nutrients.
Anyways, this is pet toe biters. Hope you guys learned something new. And so many of you guys were asking me to sign more coloring books.
So I went ahead and signed 500 more. So if you're watching this around when I posted it, there's a very good chance you can go and pick one up on teranto. com and get a signed copy.
And even if you're not watching right after it's posted, they're still really cool and we made them super educational and super fun so you can learn a lot while having a great time. There's more information on the website. Anyways, thank you guys so much for watching and goodbye guys.
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