Reptile & Amphibian Forums

At the risk of starting a riot on the board.. (I have been at this a few months now, so please lets refrain from that). I am not pleased with the sand substrate. The temps are getting way to hard to regulate and keep constant, and honestly it doesn't seem to look clean to me ever.. not even after I've just put it in. Here's my dilemma. I love the look of my natural plants etc... and I dont want to have just pots sitting in my tank eitehr, so repti-carpet is out. I dont want papertowels either... I want something I can bury my pots in etc.... maybe smoething that doesn't hold heat as well as sand.. any ideas??

Jeff
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0.3.0 Nannar, Abbie and Aspen
0.0.1 Ball Python Striker
1.0.0 Parakeets

hmm... what kind of root systems are on your plants? I have made a desert tank before for other lizards that involved abase layer of two parts sand to one part coconut husk fiber and then covered it with various pieces of granite and had the plants growing out of the cracks. This would be very hard to do witha UTH though. If you have very shallow root systems and can find some thin enough pieces of slate it might work. I assume you are talking about succulents, and as far as they go I would suggest Haworthia, and possibly Opuntia Microdays (the spineless variety) though I am not sure of the root systems.

well any small particled sand will look messy. you can use slate as a substrate and then use nice looking clay pots since they will be sitting on the slate. naturalistic terrariums are VERY hard to keep up when you have animals living in them. but the tank can still look nice with the pots showing. actually, in the leopard geckos natural habitat, there is a very small amount of vegetation. not much can grow because of the rocky soil except for maybe a small tuft of grass or weeds here and there. the most naturalistic setup would be slate pieces with a SLIGHT dusting of sand between the cracks with plenty of cork bark hides and grape wood climbing branches with maybe a fake plant stuck near the water bowl.

Cleo

I don't think naturalistic viavariums are all that hard to maintain as long as they are set up properly by matching the plants to the animals. A major downfall of many desert vivariums is that many succulants are not native to the desert and some even prefer tropical and sub-tropical conditions. Also some will need a type of soil impossible to provide. Another problem with attempting a leopard gecko setup is that they only poop in one corner, so a safe slow release fertilizer may be required unless you plan on replacing the plants every year or so. The only fertilizers that I know of to be 0 safe are blood meal bone meal cottonseed meal and unproccessed fish meal. I'm pretty sure that fish meal has way to much nitogen, but a mix of one part cottonseed meal, one part bone meal , and one part bloodmeal will be safe and continue to fertilize for up to five years. I have also used Osmocote in desert vivs before which is safe as long as not ingested in high numbers or used with amphibians and is probably not the best idea for leopard geckos as many tend to eat substrate but it should be safe if you keep a very careful eye on them. I have an old Reptiles magazine with an article on fertilizers but I'm not sur of the date because most of mine over a year old are missing the covers. Almost all of this information was collected from my libraries plant books and a few articles in reptiles magazine but before attempting something this elaborate make sure you read up on this yourself.

Are you using a thermostat to keep heat stable?

You could also try large river stones, or slate, or tile.

I have my UTH on a rheostat, but the temps change too much based on the house temp. I really am not that worried at the moment about my warm side temps, its my cool side being too warm that I'm worried about. I mean, I want to give them a really decent gradient, and this only 7 or 8 degrees difference I dont like very much. I have some dry climate succulents in the tank, 2 large pieces of driftwood, 2 hides, a calcium bowl, water, a few flat rocks...

Jeff
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0.3.0 Nannar, Abbie and Aspen
0.0.1 Ball Python Striker
1.0.0 Parakeets

What kind of top do you have on the tank? are you getting enough air-flow to let the hot air out on the cool side? Just a thought
Ryan
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Go with flat rocks/slate with smaller pebbles/gravel in the cracks. Make sure, of course, that the gravel particles are too large for the gecko to mistakenly eat. I'm sure they wouldn't purposely eat something the size of a pinky! I personally have a wooden enclosure and just use that as the bottom except for rocks here and there.
Adam
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