short question :)

[jay76]

Got to wondering... how many leos could I comfortably keep in a 30 gallon tank (36 x 12 x 18)? I originally guessed 1.2

Jay

[Clownfishie]

Sounds about right :)

[jay76]

Thanks Jen :) Oh, hey, there's another 30g up for grabs if you're interested... ;)

[Blazin]

You could probably get away with another female. A 3 foot long aqaurium offers plenty of room. Specially when leopards like to lounge around!

[jay76]

thanks for your suggestion blazin... any ideas as to how many hides (and how big) i'd need for 4 leos in one tank? one big enough for all of them on both sides or a few smaller ones scattered around? Having more than 1 lizard together is new to me :)

[Clownfishie]

You usually want at least one hide for each animal -- you could do 2 at the warm end (one humid, one not), one in the middle, and one at the cool end... that would probably work fairly well...

[Blazin]

Yeah I would say around 3-4 hides should be plenty. Mine tend to all crawl inside together. But that would probably be a good idea.

[jakejeff]

make sure the little guy's have a little room to wonder around (open space)

[jay76]

Thanks for the tips all. Much appreciated! :)

[Alicewave]

Arrange rocks and flat pieces of wood and stuff so that you have hide spots in addition to traditional hide boxes like caves. Any crevaces that you can make dark that they will fit, they'll use as a hide. Be creative and have fun.

[jay76]

Actually I've been toying with siliconing a bunch of pieces of slate and some rocks together either along the back or on the ends. Has anyone ever tried something like that?

[DragnDrop]

I used some storage drawers from Canadian TIre for hides in one of my tanks for a few years. They are the kind that you can add on to, I believe the name is something along the lines of 'add-a-drawer'. They slide together to as big an organizer you want, but for my purposes, I didn't use the drawer itself, just the 'frame' that slides onto the neighbouring ones. You can make almost any size 'cliff' with them, siicone slate and/or rocks to camouflage the plastic affair. They can even be staggered to some extent by not sliding them all full length, making easy steps for the leos to climb up, and come in single or double width, making ideal hides for one or two leos in each one. The only colours I've seen are grey, but that's not too bad, especially if you add rocks, slate or wood around it.

[Alicewave]

DragnDrop, if you have a pic of that put it up. It sounds really cool but I'm having troub;e with the mental image. Thanks!

[lance]

yeah a pic of that would be great
as for silaconing the rock and slate together go for it i've done it just used marine silacone and stuck them together
just be sure not to make it to big or heavey you can't move it at cleaning time and make sure it rests on the bottom of the tank so they can't burrow under it