Help me with my new water dragons!
Short story:
I ended up with a water dragon and an unknown species similar to the water dragon. they are both only about 2 feet long even though they are over 3 years old. I brought them home in an 80 gallon long aquarium (6 feet long x 21" tall x 13" wide). The guy said he would bring the stand and the top half of the cage (which was approx. 6 feet x 36" x 13") to my work on monday b/c he was moving to florida tuesday (today). Well, he never showed up and never returned my calls so now they are in a tank way too small for them. I am ok with a hammer and nail, so I'm planning on building a new top half on thursday and friday. The problem is I have VERY little money and need to know the cheapest way to turn this into an acceptable enclosure. I do have a nice little canister filter that would be great for up to 20 gallons of water space. This will also be cool because I won't be able to do water changes every day. I have all the lighting and decorations I need, but no substrate or building materials. What do you think I need and how much do you think it will cost? Thanks for your help. The story about how I got the tank and stuff is below if you feel like reading more.
Long story:
A guy came into my work last week and asked if I knew anybody interested in reptiles. I obviously said that I was and he told me he was moving to Florida and needed to find a home for his water dragon, "pink spotted river dragon", breeding pair of Madagascar giant day geckos, and some fish that were also in the enclosure. I went to check it out the next day. The tank is (I think) and 80 gallon long. it was 3/4 full of water and the algae was so bad I couldn't tell what fish were in there. Upon closer inspection I saw several hundred guppies and some kind of cichlid, I think a jack dempsey, and a couple of crayfish. He said he got the cichlid and the crayfish to control the guppy population. I can't imagine how many must have been in there before he got them! Anyways, onto the lizards. The top half of the enlosure was melamine on 3 sides and mesh on the front and top. He said the water dragon would go down and take a swim every morning but the other one didn't go down except to drink (I'm surprised he even did that). The water dragon had MBD as a juvenile and developed a hump on it's back and a small one on one side of it's tail. It had since recovered and seemed to be doing well for the conditions. The other dragon is very aggressive and in the middle of shedding, so it's hard to tell if everything else is ok. He said the female gecko lays eggs multiple times during the year but they, of course, simply drop into the water so he never raised any. The female has a very broken tail right at the base. He said it's been like that for a couple years and it doesn't seem to affect her in any way. It does look a little scary though as it flops down when she points down, or to the side as she moves sideways. (Could this be more serious? What can I do?) They are all handfeeding quite well which is the good news and all seem to be ok. The geckos are now in their own 20 gallon tank for obvious reasons and the other 2 are doing ok for now. I told the guy he could bring the fish to my store and we would deal with them and I told him to put the crayfish back in the creek where he found them. He never came back so who knows what he did with everything.
Well thanks for reading and I appreciate any advice you can give me.
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