Ready and waiting...

We have a Vivarium. For those who don't know a Vivarium is a fish tank for reptiles!!! We spent a fair bit of time searching one out. Not wanting to spend too much on it all we were looking for second hand ones on ebay. There were a few going mainly formica built stuff - functional but not pretty!

Having decided to have 2 Bearded Dragons, we knew that we needed a tank 4 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot. Pretty large!

Then I had a thought - so you get the tank and then where do you put it and what do you put it on!! We discovered through ebay a guy who makes vivariums out of solid pine that include a cupboard for it to sit on. AND for a very reasonable price. Sorted! It has arrived and we have stained it a dark wood colour to match other furniture on the lounge.

And it is large.

No, its Massive!!

but i think it looks pretty good...

For the set up we have gone for:

1) Heat and light provided by a 160W mercury vapour lamp. this is slightly different than other recommended setups. Normally people recommend a normal spot light, regulated by a thermostat, plus a UVB emitting flourescent tube. The reptile keeping guys we talked to said just get a mercury vapour lamp and have it on for 12-14 hours a day and you are sorted! It is a fairly new setup idea, but we liked the simplciity, so we went for it. We are actually buying our Bearded Dragons from them as well, since they have recommended the setup. The only risky thing was that I had to cut a hole in the lovely pine roof of the vivarium to fit the lamp in!

2)Bark chippings for the substrate. Cor that was a hard one to work through! We have gone for bark becasue it looks good with our setup! Sand was a no-no it seems. The concern about it is that the lizards might eat it and get compaction in their digestive system. Different people say different things can result in compaction!" all very confusing for the teh new starters. We are following advice again from the reptilekeeping.net guys that says that as long as you keep it the same the lizards can cope!

3) We got some drift wood from the beach in Devon for them to climb on!

4) We got some stones off the beach as well to create our "Pride Rock" basking stone!

5) Oh and a bit of cork bark

6) I think it needs of greenery to finish it off but Maddy doesn't think so! We also are not going to bother with a desert scene backdrop - by all accounts they fade, and whats the point in that?

So what is the result? Look here: