Bioactive Planted Leopard Gecko Enclosure

[sirtalis]

Hey everyone, these are a few pictures of my leopard geckos in their enclosure, the cage is a 20 gallon aquarium and the substrate is a mixture of potting soil and dirt from my backyard. I put a small amount of eco earth on top of the substrate for looks. (This is my 1st thread with pictures, so I'm sorry if they do not show up :p)
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[trailblazer295]

I'm a newbie so I'll ask what is your humidity like? With them being a desert species I would have thought that moist soil and live plants would raise the humidity to much for them.

[sirtalis]

I was actually a little worried about humidity when I put them in this cage lol. I decided to use plants that didn't need to be watered on a day to day basis, you can see a cactus in one picture.

[trailblazer295]

Do you have a humidistat?

[sirtalis]

One other thing I'll mention is that since I put them in this cage, their activity levels have been off the charts. They used to act like your average pet gecko, but now they act like the lizards you may see in your back yard. I would suspect that their high basking temperatures have something to do with this.

[sirtalis]

Yes, I've measured 40-50 % hot side and up to 60 on the cool end

[Pirarucu]

Glad to see someone keeping leopard geckos in a proper cage.

[sirtalis]

@pirarucu, thanks I looked at a few of your threads and you have some very nice cages, when I finish my 4 ft/2 ft/18 in cage for my geckos, I hope it loons something like your ball pythons cage :p

[sirtalis]

Oops, I meant to say looks :p

[jjhill001]

Can you describe your methods a bit? I really want to make something like this.

[sirtalis]

Here's a run down of their cage, and care.
20 gallon aquarium with a screen top, half of the screen is covered to prevent heat and humidity from escaping, I mixed dirt from my backyard with a soil from home Depot that is designed for desert plants, the ratio was about 60/50.i also put a very small layer of eco earth as a top layer for aesthetic purposes. I put 4 different plants in the cage, I know a pothos, a cactus, but I can't remember the other two, I'll check when I get off work. I also planted a fast growing grass that really is doing very good. I'm currently using a uvb/uva bulb, 75 watts. This keeps the basking spot at 110-115, warm end ambient is usually in the 80's and cool end is in the 70's. I water the plants every morning. Before I introduced the geckos, I put about 30? Crickets in the cage, they never reproduced, and the geckos ate them all fairly quickly. I also put a number if isopods in the cage, probably 20?, these guys eat the geckos feces, i think, because their waste is only in the cage for 2-3 days. I hope this helps, if you have any more questions, just ask.

[eminart]

Looks good. I'm a big fan of bioactive. If I ever have any more leos (and my daughter has been asking for one), I'll set them up in a bioactive enclosure.

[sirtalis]

@eminart, thanks, I'm also a big fan of bioactive

[sirtalis]

I guess this guy was in the soil from outside, I saw him eating feces with a pill bug this morning :p
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I think he's a slug