gotta love christmas!

[bampi]

Well i'm rescuing a savannah monitor today! I have not owned a monitor before, but have had various lizards/snakes. From all the reading i've been doing, I've learned that you need quite a large enclosure as well as a good amount of substrate for burrowing.

To start i've found somebody with a scummy small reptile glass tank and that will be it's home for about a week while I construct my first attempt at a forever home. I'm planning on 8.3'x3.3'x6.5' I know it's not the largest it could be. But hopefully i'm getting a female, and it will suffice for a few years. I've already gone out and got my lumber, so this afternoon will be a busy one. And i'll post pictures as it comes together.

For substrate I was reading that using 60% eco earth to 40% childs play sand is best mixture. And that is what i'm planning on. The biggest question I have at this point. Is does anybody have advice on lights. Type and placement. I know I need a basking area minimum 130F. Which I plan to achieve with a small cluster of 50w flood lights. Placing various ceramic heat bulbs throughout the tank to keep a temperature of about 85F and then let one side fall to around ambient. I have never worked on a scale this large before. Keeping my snakes environment was fairly easy once you got it set up. But any input on lighting would be phenomenal. Also water. I'd like to have a large dish of water on the basking area, to help keep a higher humidity. Will be a larger "pool" type water. But I was also thinking of keeping another water bowl on the ambient side to have a nice cool water supply. I know that savannahs don't swim/wade much. So thoughts on that? Anyways, it's about time to go pick up the small temporary tank and get that set up to support the baby when it comes home!

Thanks for your time looking through this post and I look forward to your input.