Tanner Serpa

Tanner Serpa is a popular YouTuber.

He has more than 1.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘SerpaDesign.’

Tanner is also an artist, designer, photographer, DIY enthusiast, and a nature lover.

Introduction-

Tanner Serpa was born on 5 November 1992.

His hometown is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.

His father’s name is Ed Serpa.

Tanner has an elder brother, Tyler Serpa, and sisters, Hannah Serpa, and Abbey Serpa.

Love for nature & enclosures-

While growing up, Tanner along with his brother, watched the shows of Jeff Corwin, and Steve Irwin and got attracted towards nature.

His brother was interested in animals and this interest rubbed off on him; they grew up in an area with good nature and they used to explore the woods and pick up the rocks and look at the creeks for salamanders, crayfish, toads, etc. and catch them.

Sometimes they used to bring home the caught animals but most of the time, they weren’t successful in keeping them.

The first animal that they successfully kept were American toads, they kept these for eight years and this started Tanner’s love for amphibians.

Tanner was 5 at the time he started keeping the toads but at that time, he wasn’t keeping them in proper enclosures.

As he started keeping animals for longer durations, he decided to keep them in proper enclosures which mimic their habitats, so he developed an interest in vivariums.

Tanner used to also buy animals and successfully keep them; he kept Gunther, a Dwarf African Bullfrog for 14 years.

At that time, he started building enclosures by trial and error because he wasn’t into reading books and the internet wasn’t popular, also, the TV shows weren’t helpful in demonstrating setting up enclosures.

Later, Tanner started reading forums, thanks to the internet, which has been very helpful.

Eventually, he progressed from making rudimentary enclosures to better enclosures for his animals, and thanks to his love for plants, he started incorporating them into his enclosures.

Since a very young age, Tanner has been into DIYing, and this greatly helped him in building enclosures.

At 14, he developed the aquarium hobby and the hobby of fish keeping.

His parents were very supportive of his hobbies.

In his 9^th grade, Tanner took woodworking classes from Adams, this later helped him while building enclosures.

Also, he along with his brother used to chop down the trees in the backyard and build clubhouses and treehouses, thanks to this, he acquired rudimentary woodworking skills.

Education & career-

Tanner did his schooling from Moon Area High School in Carnot-Moon, Pennsylvania.

After completing his schooling in 2011, he joined Robert Morris University in Moon Township, Pennsylvania to study for a bachelor’s degree in media arts in Graphic Design; he graduated in 2015.

From March 2012 to November 2016, Tanner worked as a part-time Graphic and Web Designer at Talent Network, Inc.

From January 2015 to November 2016, he worked as a part-time Graphic and Web Designer at Pacer Design Studios.

From November 2016 to February 2020, Tanner worked as a full-time Title Executive at First American Title.

Then, he became a full-time YouTuber.

Love for videography-

While growing up, Tanner had disposable film cameras, and he loved taking pictures with them.

Once his mother bought a Sharp Camcorder, at that time he was 6, he and his brother quickly claimed the video camera for themselves.

Tanner started filming his animals and various skits with the camcorder and fell in love with videography.

At 14, he secured his first job and worked hard and saved money with which he bought his first digital camera, a Canon PowerShot A530.

His YouTube channels-

At that time, YouTube got launched, and Tanner created his first YouTube channel on 9 October 2006.

At that time, he along with his friends used to produce goofy videos, reverse them, and upload them onto his channel.

At that time, there wasn’t an option to earn from YouTube but thanks to his love for videography, he continued producing videos.

Later, Tanner started producing videos of his animals and uploaded them onto his channel, but he wasn’t a consistent YouTuber as he used to publish videos occasionally.

On 26 April 2013, he started his second YouTube channel, ‘SerpaDesign’.

At that time, Tanner was studying graphic design in college; he named his channel SerpaDesign, after his last name, Serpa, and used the term ‘design’ as he was into graphic design and vivarium design.

On 7 January 2021, he started his third YouTube channel, ‘Tanner Serpa.’

An inconsistent YouTuber-

While studying at college, Tanner didn’t take his SerpaDesign YouTube channel seriously as he used to inconsistently publish videos.

In 2014, he decided to seriously work on his channel but couldn’t, as at that time, he was in a transitional period of his life.

On 25 December 2014, Tanner published a video, ‘Make a Succulent Terrarium – How to Terrarium ep. 1,’ and then took a two-year hiatus from YouTube.

Later, as he observed that few of his videos were getting decent traction, he returned to working on his YouTube channel.

His inspiration-

In 2016, Tanner subscribed to the YouTube channel of Joey Mullen, ‘The king of DIY,’ and started avidly watching his videos.

He was inspired by the success of ‘The king of DIY,’ as this was a channel related to aquariums, this gave him inspiration to work on his own YouTube channel and make it successful.

And from that time onwards, Tanner started consistently publishing videos on the SerpaDesign channel and also, started improving the quality of his videos.

A successful YouTuber-

As of June 2023, Tanner has 1.56M subscribers on his SerpaDesign YouTube channel and has 116K followers on Instagram.

He earns from advertisements on his YouTube videos and merchandise.

Tanner has a website.

As a kid, he wanted to make a living by following his passions of animals and art, thanks to YouTube, he has been able to follow his passions.

Personal life-

On May 11, 2019, Tanner married Alyssa Serpa.

He lives in Pennsylvania.

Some interesting facts about Tanner-

As a child, he used to play a lot with Lego, this later helped him to creatively fit his various enclosure setups in a small space.
Tanner’s other talents apart from keeping animals are cooking, painting, beat boxing, and playing video games.
His favourite animals to keep are frogs.
Tanner’s favourite enclosures are paludariums as it combines both terrestrial and aquatic elements.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Tanner Serpa?

Share with me in the comment section below.