Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am planing to build my desert monitors a bigger cage! now its 8 x 4 x 3 and im not happy with it!! they need more room so im goin to go 12 x 8 x 3 or 15 x 8 x 3 for my pair. but my question is how do you heat a cage that big?? keep in mind the 130-140 heat rang they need!! any suggestions??

With some of these, the light banks in the back ground. I heat that room 13x15 with two sets of four. Even on very cold winter days the temps have not dropped below 70.

Roger

awesome lookin' nile. how big is it?

Thanks. Last I checked around 4'2".

I use large radiant heat panals from pro products to raise the temps of my larger cages and banks of heat lamps for the hot spots. The deserts are looking good cant wait till I have to build mine thier nest cage. Have a good one keep us posted on how they are doing. Thanks Ian

hey sid what wattage bulb are you using?

75 watt incandescent floods.

thanks!! to you both!! that helps a lot!! hopefully they will wake up here in a few weeks, and ill get some breeding activity out of them!!
take it easy
Jake

I've found that with an inside cage, heating can be acomplished with one basking section at one end. This usually allows a nice gradient of heating down the length of the enclosure. With Hotspost what you want to hit, down to around 70f for options they can choose.

If this is the first time they've went down for you? You should deffinatly get breeding activity when they come up. Mine tend to wait a few days and get some food in them before they start. I just try to feed the female as much as she will take, as mine tends to not eat quite as fast as the male does after they come up and the male is pretty relentless in his efforts.

I think this will be the 4th year of them going down, coming up, and breeding, with no results so far. I deffinatly know it has at least a little to with being lazy on my part.

Mine have also started going down at different times. It seems to get earlier every year. I think it was around August they came up from about a 3 month nap or whatever it is.

I have a video I took a few years ago of the mating "dance" that I need to figure out how to put up.

Some really cool monitors to say the least.

-Jeff

yes this is the first time they have gown down in my possession. but I dont think terry let them go down bc they were only babies bf he sold them to me.
they wanted to go down last year but I was afraid for my female bc she wasn't ready t breed!! so I warmed them up a little and they did great!! but this year I let them do there thing and I haven't seen them out since Oct. but I turned the lights on for the first time yesterday and hopefully they will be up in a week or so!! man it would be AWESOME to get some breeding out of them!!