I made a couple of posts about the burrow I put in my water monitor tank. I put it in for no particular reason, figuring it would use it or not. I built it to be easy to watch and remove if necessary. In this case it has worked really well to the point that I will make something similar available in the following enclosures and any other terrestrial species I acquire.
For this one I used some 4" drain pipe with a downspout end on it because it fit onto the plastic tub the most efficiently. The tub is something like 14 x 11 and about 3" deep with a locking top. I positioned it where the entrance is hidden at the back of the enclosure by plants and some slate. The tub itself is covered by a thin layer of soil just below the surface and the water dish sits on top of it. The Idea was, at any time, I could remove the water dish, scrape away the dirt, unlatch the lid and check on the young one.
The theory was sound but I ran into a couple of problems. The first was that I over planted that end of the cage. This one was still small and I wanted to provide as much cover as was realistic. The plants in this cage have not been utilized like the baby cage because of, I think, the larger burrow. Although I could tell that the entire cage gets explored, its walking on top of the plants not laying under them. When I removed the dirt from the top of the burrow , there was no place to put it out of the way. That made things cramped and messy.
Once I got the top off I saw where it liked to lay and how it had positioned the dirt around the den, but no monitor. My second oversight was not considering that when I took off the lid the lizard was just going to go inside the pipe where I still could not see him, duh. Because this did not go as smooth as planned, I did not remove the monitor right away. I replace the top, which did not latch correctly because of all the extra dirt, and put the water dish back on top while I considered how to remove the monitor without adding more stress to an already stressful situation. The next day when I got home from work, the cage was all dug up. Interestingly, although there were more plants and an extra perch, the layout was similar to the baby tank and all the new holes were approximately in the same positions in this tank. Anyway, that is the first time it occurred to me that it hadn't been digging in this cage.
I ended up removing the water dish and the plants on that end. I pushed the dirt away and removed the entire burrow and laid it in a large rubbermaid. I held it at an angle and waited for it to stick its head out. It came out pretty easily. I removed the burrow and washed it, then put everything back. Here are some pics.
This one with the water dish positioned above the tub.
Picked this up last Friday, for my next build for this little guy. Round 3
Linear Mode
