This weekend I totally reconfigured our little guy's vivarium. He is a Mexican (annulata), so I wanted to do a very natural setting close to what might be in their habitat in TX and Mexico.
I previously had sand and aspen shavings in his enclosure, which did not warm up as well as I thought it would. The sand, having less space between the grains, did not leave very much space for air and heat to pass up and through it.
Using Philip de V's Desert Vivarium book as a guide I put down a 1 inch base of pea gravel, and on top of that I laid down about 3 inches of a mixture of cactus potting medium mixed with decomposed/crushed granite, placed a couple succulents, a Jade plant, and a Dracaena (still in their pots with the bottoms cut out) buried up to the rims, a river rock over the underglass heater, a log with good hide space underneath and his water bowl/minature pond.
With the same 2 75w heat lamps on after dark as before, the temps now stay around 80f, whereas I was having a hard time getting it above 70f before.
Pepe is actually coming out and basking right after dark, and having a great time burrowing through the new substrate, which kind of holds its shape after he digs do there is a network of tunnels now. He seems to enjoy tunneling and crawling over and through the plants. We rarely saw him out & about with the previous setup.
It was definitely worth the couple of hours time to redo his home, and it turned out much more pleasing to look at as well. Much better than a just a glass box with some things in it.
I'll post pics soon.
Paul
