- [Brian] I'm gonna spend 4 million dollars
expanding The Reptarium.
- I wanna spend $5 on some socks from the thrift store.
- And this isn't a flex at all,
but I wanna take a look at why it's gonna cost me so much.
Let's start with the reptile section
including my girl Salt here.
We all know that Salt and Pepper are getting giant.
They're gonna have to get giant enclosures
and their enclosure is gonna be absolutely massive,
starting here and going all the way out to here.
And that enclosure alone will be about $50,000.
And you might notice that there is a wall in the spot.
I'm gonna talk about that in a little bit.
And who doggy is Ivy looking big.
I mean, she is absolutely huge.
With my calculations, we're about two,
maybe two and a half months away
from potential anaconda babies.
And you guys remember that I built this enclosure
and all the other enclosures for a reptarium
in the expansion down at Universal Rock.
It was a lot of fun and a lot of work.
And we're gonna be building a whole bunch more.
I figure The Reptarium side of the reptile enclosures
and expansion is gonna be somewhere about
a half million dollars,
which ironically enough
is the cheapest part of the entire expansion.
And the enclosures that I built
here at the Universal Rock can literally be
sometimes as cheap is five or six thousand dollars
or cost as much as 50 thousand dollars
like the anaconda cage.
So every enclosure we're building this time
is gonna be absolutely massive,
and it's definitely gonna be
on the high end of that per enclosure.
We want them to be an absolute stunner,
each and every enclosure.
A bunch of our animals are gonna need upgrades as well,
like my boy Elvis here.
Of course Elvis has a giant enclosure right now,
but I want him to have a real show stunner,
much like Ivy's enclosure.
I want it to be big,
I want there to be waterfalls,
I want him to be able to swim around
'cause he is an absolutely amazing animal.
And I can't imagine what he's gonna do
when he has a giant pond to swim in all the time,
'cause this guy loves to get into the turtle pond.
So every enclosure is not only gonna have new animals in it,
some of them are gonna have animals
that we already have, just upgrades.
It's gonna be incredible.
With all the expansion, there's no doubt that
the one thing that I've always wanted to add
is a venomous aisle.
Of course we have some really beautiful snakes here.
What are these, Bruce?
- White-lipped pit vipers actually.
But they're the trimeresurus albolabris.
- Absolutely incredible.
Of course you can see with these,
this little guy down here
is actually a male and the bigger girl is a female
and these are actually sexually dimorphic.
Meaning that the males stay small,
the females get bigger.
These are live-bearing snakes.
My buddies down in South Africa actually have albinos
or as they'd say albinos of these.
And they're absolutely wonderful.
But I wonder with you guys, you know,
should I add a venomous section to The Reptarium?
What do you think, Bruce?
- Absolutely.
- I knew Bruce would say that,
Lori's not a big fan.
In the comments, let me know if you guys
think that we should add a little venomous section.
What you guys think about it,
while you're down there,
hit that like button and subscribe if you don't mind.
Then another animal
that I absolutely love to death right here.
And I'm gonna just take this out.
This is actually the king
of all rattlesnakes in North America in my opinion.
This of course,
is the largest rattlesnake species in North America,
eastern diamondback rattlesnake,
look at that snake right there.
Beautiful color, beautiful pattern to that animal.
And of course this is gonna one day get big.
I mean, what's the biggest of
the eastern diamondbacks?
I mean they can get like eight foot, right?
- Man, honestly, I've heard rumors,
never seen it before in my life,
but I've heard rumors of almost getting 10 feet,
like nine feet long.
- 10 foot long.
Think about that as a rattlesnake, heavy body.
Absolutely beautiful.
I love eastern diamondbacks.
In The Reptarium it might be a really cool display.
There's no doubt about that.
A big giant rattlesnake.
Again, let me know what you guys think.
We're actually meeting with the architects right now.
So we're heading off to a meeting.
Of course what's gonna be
the most expensive part of the entire thing
is the actual building itself.
So we're getting close to the end on this project.
I'm excited to see what these guys have to say.
The process of making this expansion
has been a long one already.
We've been working over six months with the architects,
just trying to come up with the design.
Now we're actually moving onto the next step,
which is the exciting step
where we're actually gonna be meeting
not all only with our architects,
but also with our general contractor.
Then we can start getting into the nitty gritty part
of what this build is gonna actually cost.
Which I'm not excited about hearing that number.
The meeting went absolutely incredible,
but they did raise a few issues
that I am a bit concerned about.
So back to The Reptarium.
And those issues are actually about support.
We know putting an aquarium upstairs
is gonna be difficult,
cause we're gonna need a lot of support,
which means that we actually have to run footings
and then beams from the basement
all the way up into the top here.
The downside is that they have to go
behind this enclosure and behind this enclosure here.
Which means that we're gonna have to rip these things up.
We're gonna have to pull these enclosures out
and we're gonna have to put the beams all the way up
and then put them back in.
It's definitely not something I wanted to hear.
It's gonna be a bummer,
It's gonna be a lot of work,
but in the end we have to do what we have to do
to make sure it's structurally able
to hold all the weight of the aquarium.
Trust me, when we're doing the expansion
there is gonna be a ton of unboxing.
And if you guys remember when I unboxed
like that 30 thousand dollars worth of snakes recently,
if you didn't see it,
here's a card right here.
Definitely take a look at that video.
Well this is actually another one of those.
What basically happened is I got ten of them,
but there was one animal that
just wasn't quite eating really well.
So he was like, "You know what?
I'm gonna go ahead and hang on to it, get it feeding,
and then I'll send it to you."
Well, it's starting to eat and he sent it
and I'm excited because these guys are beautiful.
Of course they're what they call dreamsicle pie.
So they're lavender and they're pie
recessive mutations together.
And I'm telling you what,
they are some stunning snakes.
The ones I got about a month ago,
oh my God, by the way, I never put them up for sale.
I decided to keep them all.
I should probably sell one or two to be honest with you,
but I haven't put them up on the website.
Trying to hide them from Lori.
So don't tell Lori, whatever you do.
This is the other dreamsicle.
Wow, this one's cool.
It's got a lot of pattern to it.
Just a little bit of white in the back.
Makes it really cool.
Again, all this white in this pattern is gonna turn purple
when it gets older.
It's gonna be an absolute ripper.
As we're expanding, can you imagine
the hundreds and hundreds of boxes of fish
we're gonna be opening, maybe thousands of boxes of fish,
not to mention the dozens of boxes of reptiles.
It's gonna be amazing.
Let me know if you guys love unboxing as much as I do.
So that basically wraps up the reptile section
as far as the expansion there.
Let's move on to what's gonna be really the biggest expense.
And that has to do with what I'm holding
in my hands right now,
which are the blueprints to the building.
And it's gonna look like this in the front
and like this in the back.
So yes, the building is going to be expensive.
Met with the general contractors today
and they walked through the building
and kind of gave me a general idea how much it's gonna cost.
I don't even want to tell you guys.
- Come on Mr Brian, tell us.
- Yeah, it's gonna be about $2.5 million
just for the build out.
- That's a whole lot of ice cream.
- There goes my inheritance.
- And this is where I need your imagination.
Remember when we built the first Reptarium
and I said I needed your imagination.
Do you guys get the idea
of the space that we have?
Obviously the walls need to be kind of redone a little bit.
This needs to still get out of here.
What do you think Lori?
- It's space.
- And then when we built the second reptarium,
I said the same thing,
walked into what was a tattoo parlor.
I said, I need your imagination.
Guys here it is.
So guess what?
Now I need it.
- I need it.
- So basically what's gonna happen is this wall here
is coming down, right?
Kaboom, that's gone.
This out here.
This wall here is coming down
and this is going all the way out,
right to the edge right here.
That's where the wall is gonna be.
So when you look at The Reptarium,
this is gonna be a wall of glass right here.
- It's gonna be a very serious wall.
- Up front here is actually gonna be a pond
that goes all the way from here,
all the way to this sidewalk
with a half wall that is dividing the sidewalk.
That's the way the outside's gonna look,
it's gonna look absolutely incredible.
But definitely gonna be a lot of work.
So to put that in perspective,
when you're actually in The Reptarium,
this is no longer gonna be the only thing you're gonna see.
You're gonna be able to see all the way
into the other side of the building,
and you're gonna be able to walk through there.
So we're gonna be actually adding a third
of the space of The Reptarium on that side,
and then we're gonna be actually adding about another third
of the space in the front side,
which is basically doubling
the square footage of The Reptarium.
Then we have the entire top floor that goes on.
So doubling all of the square footage
of The Reptarium,
we're gonna then double that again
to have the upstairs completely.
Now it's gonna be 14 foot high on one side
and about 25 foot high on the other side.
So it's gonna slant up to look absolutely incredible.
And that's just the building part.
Now we have to get into the aquariums.
And to get an idea a little bit more about aquariums,
I'm heading over to my good friend
Steve Bashi over at Bashsea aquatics.
When looking for aquarium answers,
you always go to a place that has a 20 foot shark on it.
- What up?
- What's up dude?
So what the heck is this Steve?
- That is a huge twisted protein skimmer.
- What does that do?
- That removes nutrients from water,
basically a salt water purifier.
- As you can see, I really know a lot about this stuff.
And you know that giant skimmer?
They actually need huge pumps this size,
just to give you an idea how much space
it needs for filtration.
Steve has so much stuff here like this pump
and this thing, a hanging kit,
I have no idea what it is.
I think this is a space gun.
Bulkheads and more bulkheads.
All kinds of crazy fittings.
This one's awesome.
I can actually turn the knob.
Obviously you gotta get swoll if you work with acrylic.
There's gotta be a use for this,
I have no idea what it is.
Some more of these, that's fitting.
Bunch of skimmers, media chamber apparently.
I don't know are these brass knuckles.
I saw these at a ramen place once.
Steve has a problem with a lot of glue.
More drums sets than any one person needs.
CNC laser and you get the point,
Steve is definitely the guy that's gonna help me
make this aquarium happen.
I'd love to get your take on it,
but I don't like this idea to be honest with you.
I've known Steve Bashi since I was 15 years old.
We used to hang out at the pet shop I used to work at.
And the thing is,
he's always had an amazing eye for detail
and he loves things to look absolutely perfect.
That's the reason why it's so important for me
to have him involved in this project,
because I know with him designing things,
this is gonna be absolutely incredible.
- Why are you about to faint?
- I have no idea what you're talking about now.
I literally don't.
- He looks flushed.
- All right, Steve.
So this is the deal.
I have $1 million.
- To start, right?
- Is it enough?
- Do you want me to lie to you
or do you want me to tell you the truth?
- How much more than a million dollars do I need?
- Probably 10, 15 dollars more than that.
- I could swing that.
- I don't know, I can't tell you, man.
There's a lot going on here.
Could be 10 million give or take,
anywhere from between one and 10.
- I want to cry now.
- I'm spending all of my money
on animals because that's what matters to me.
I'm not going out and buying things for me.
What I'm doing is expanding my business in the sense
that I can educate and get people excited about the animals.
Trust me when it comes to an investment
this probably isn't the smartest things I've ever done,
but hey, this is what I'm doing because this is my dream.
And I wanna make a place
that's gonna be absolutely incredible
for people to come from all over the world.
And then of course, there's the dig site
which is the dungeon right now.
These snakes have to move into a new facility.
So this entire basement is done.
But this wall up here, that green wall right
there that actually gets pushed back another 16 foot.
So this space is even bigger.
Again, this is gonna be like
an archeological dig site, right?
So you can come down, you can search for fossils.
There'll be areas for you to dig in.
There'll be actually places where you can sift for gold.
I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was kid.
So I'm building this for me.
I may just keep it for me.
I may not even be open to the public.
I'm not sure, but it is gonna cost a bunch of money
'cause we're gonna have to dig that whole thing out here,
rip all this stuff out,
new heating and cooling, plumbing.
We're gonna have to trench the floors.
It's gonna be a lot, I don't know,
this room alone is gonna probably be somewhere about 50
to a 100 thousand dollars,
but it's gonna be so cool.
Obviously this is a dream come true guys.
I'm trying to build a place I've been dreaming
about my entire life and I know it's gonna happen.
When is it gonna happen?
To be honest with you,
not sure what the answer is,
probably hoping for this fall
to actually start the construction.
Probably gonna take about a year to get completely done.
Maybe even a little bit longer with the aquarium side,
but hey, we're gonna continue to work on it.
Hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
If you did,
there's a playlist that you can watch all kinds of videos.
You can also hit that subscription button.
It would mean a lot to me,
also hit that like button while you're down there,
have a wonderful day reptile army.
Remember, be kind to someone and I promise
I'll see you in the next one.