Saturday, March 15, 2003

[My Setup] What follows is a detailed description of my leopards' cage.

The enclosure is about 3 square feet surface area and was made from a 29 gallon fish tank over on its side with the now topmost side taken out and cut to put where the tank top was. I hope that's clear. The substrate is felt with small pieces of slate, mostly over the area that the under-tank heater is, bought from the local pet store.

Heating is a Cobra 11" x 11" under tank heater (uth) on a 1/2" thick piece of styrofoam for insulation, on a thermostat, set to 78* F, and it starts maintaining that temperature at night after the daytime equipment has gone off. During the day, I have a ceramic heat emitter (che) on a lamp dimmer, then a thermostat set for 90* F., then on a timer set for 13 hours of daylight. A fluorescent fixture is also plugged into the timer.

The tank is sort of cluttered, even though there's so much space, because I have many hiding boxes, made out of frozen macaroni and cheese containers. They work rather well. I use perlite in small aquarium filter bags, moistened and put into some hides to create humid hides. I also have a humid hide made out of a tupperware-type container with the sides taped with duct tape (make sure no tape is loose or can come off - leopards can get stuck on tape), a hole cut in the lid for access, and a mixture of vermiculite and potting soil (not recommended, but I haven't had any problems) inside the container. It also doubles as a laying container.

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

My favorite leopards (short for leopard gecko) are the ones I live with - Jake, Indi, and Roxy, in order of age. Jake is something like 25 months old, and Indi and Roxy are not much younger. They are all normal phase Leopard Geckos. They have been super!, even though they don't know I'm complimenting them here. Stand by for more content...