I havent started a thread in awhile, so figured I would post a picture of my newest enclosure and animal. Its the first time Ive actually bought an animal in ages, rather than just taking on a rescue. The little guy was bred by a friend of mine, and is about as cute and personable as any lizard should be.
For the substrate I used a mix of topsoil, sand, humus and a bit of decomposed granite. There is a two inch drainage layer underneath, with a layer of fibreglass screen over that. I wanted to make sure that the soil drained quickly and thoroughly at the bottom, hence the slightly larger drainage area. I put down a layer or leaf litter over the soil, including sea grape, live oak, magnolia and a few others. Unfortunately I live in the city so have to buy everything.
I put in quite a few rocks, logs, bark, etc to give the invertebrate life plenty of places to hide and still retain moisture. Ive added local isopods, African nightcrawlers and apparently a few crickets found their way in at some point also. I think I may try some dermestid beetles in there too, but havent gotten around to that just yet.
I planted aloe, hen and chicks, a species of spineless cactus and, if Im totally honest, I cant remember the name of the one on the far left. All non toxic and he has happily shown me which ones he likes to eat best if I dont feed him often enough.
The hen and chicks seem to be his favourite so far, though as the second picture shows, he is more than happy to climb the cactus and have at the top softer pads. Most of the plants are planted directly in the soil. However, Ive never had much luck with cacti, so kept that in its pot and planted the whole pot in the soil. If he keeps having at it like that, I dont know how well its going to hold up anyway.
For lighting, I have a 4 foot Zoomed HO T5 fluorescent tube with reflector, an Arcadia 100 watt MVB, a 70 watt Iwasaki Eye ColourArc metal halide and a 75 watt halogen flood. The warmest part of the basking area gets to about 133F surface temp, slowly tapering off to the cool side of around 75F. And as you can see, his enclosure sits in the window and gets lots of extra UVA and visible light throughout the viv. However, the sun never shines directly in this window and the top is open to allow any extra heat out.
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