Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey all, I have two Igs and was planning on building a cage for one of them. Ive been looking around for suitable branches but its been hard to find any around here.Looking around outside for some right now is useless cause I live in Northern IL and most of any good branches are horrid now cause of our nasty winter so far.Checked out a arts and craft store for some but their prices are nuts for some that I like. Any ideas for a basking area for my Igs would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Hey, I recently constructed a decent sized cage for my iguana. As far as tree branches I originally planned to put an acutal branch in the cage but after coming up short as to the shape I wanted and then when I found what I needed and realized how heavy it was I opted to go with a custom pvc setup. I just painted it black and wrapped the straight areas with astro turf. The iguanas love it, and its easy to clean. Here are some pictures of the cage.

sweet pics man.Can you give me some instructions on how to build a pvc setup like that?Im not much of a handy man when it comes to building things with my hands but i manage to get by through trial and error.Thanks for your input!!!

hey can u send me pics of your lighting setup? cause im trying to come up with good lighting areas in my cage so that the igs can get the proper heat/UVB consumption.Cause I dont want the igs to be too far away from the UVB source so that they can adequatly recieve the proper UVB rays.Thanks

For the tree, I basically drew out and idea of what shape I wanted and the diameter. For my ig, i have a 1 year old male and built a cage he can grow in to, so I used all 4" pvc. Home Depot or Lowes should have all that you need including the pvc glue and the caps for the ends. I used a toilet bowl floor mount to mount the tree to the floor. Construction of the tree is pretty straight forward. Measure out the legnth of the limbs and the height of the tree (don't forget that you need about 1.5" to 2" for the joints to fit together) and cut. I used a table saw, if you had extra hands you might be able to pull it off with a saws-all or jig. Once cut just piece together, I mounted it to two 2x4's just to let it dry outside the cage. Then sprayed with plastic flat black paint. For the straight edges I cut to fit astro-turf (also from lowes) and used 14" zip-ties to attach, that way if needed to replace its easy. good luck,

For the lights I don't have a good picture of the setup, and I go to school about 2hrs away from home so won't have one for atleast another week or two. But I used two 100watt heat lamps about a foot and a half off the top of the two basking shelves. One 24" UVB bulb, mounted at the top the same height away from the shelves and one night light for viewing at night (no practical use just visual). I didn't put the heat lamps in the cage per say i cut a hole in the roof and lined with mesh so that he can't climb on them and burn himself. I have to thermometers in the cage and they read about 90 on the shelves and 75-80 on the floor (this varies with the season). Here are all the pics of the process of building the cage, sorry its a lot but hopefully it sparks some ideas. good luck.

http://s380.photobucket.com/albums/oo250/xxBellxx09/Iguana Cage/?albumview=grid

Thanks for the imfo man.Im going to see if i can throw something together.I got 2 igs and they are growing quick time and need some cage mods fast.I too go to school,am a full time student studying fire science in hopes to obtain a firefighting job somewhere.These igs take a lot of my time,but its well worth it cause I love these guys.Good thing my school is only a 20 min drive!Imma keep you posted on my progress.

alright man, well goodluck and if the firefighting works out... be careful...