Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have my newly purchased Beardie who is 7 1/2 inches including tail and i have her in a 10 gallon tank soon to be upgarded for her adult size i was wondering if my setup was good i have play sand on the bottom very fine grain and 2 1/2 inches hight and branches witch are all cooked in the oven now to my set up i have a 5 1/2 ceramic fixture at the top with a 60 watt spot bulb in over his basking spot (soon be 75 Watt) and then i have the strip light run across the whole cage and it hold a 15 inch, 14 watt Repti Glo 8.0 by EXO TERRA and it says 33%UVA and 8%UVB

I also have two ceramic dishes inside to hold her food and water

Is this set up good and what could i do to make it better ?

And does the Repti glo 8.0 bulb good for the UV requirments for the beardie or do i need repti sun 5.0?

Lee Thomas

1.0 Burmese Python
0.1 Ball Python
0.1 Bearded Dragon
0.1 Green Iguana

From the sounds of your setup, there is a good chance you will cook your dragon. Do you have a digital thermometer to measure the basking spot temperature? Should be between 95F-115F. The 60W bulb should be more than enough to keep the basking temp in the above range. I used a 75 W bulb in a 35 Gal tank and kept it around 95F-100F in the basking spot.

Get rid of the playsand for now and just use plain papertowel. A dragon that small shouldn't be on any type of sand or other particulate substrate as they have a greater risk of injesting too much and becoming impacted. Once they are over 10" long you can switch back to washed playsand, though I recommend non slip shelf liner or plastic table cloth due to the ease of cleaning, no risk of injesting and light weight.

The Repti glo 8.0 bulb is fine and actually puts out more UVB than the 5.0 (or so they claim on the packaging). I use the 8.0 bulb myself and find it does bring out more colour in my dragon than the 5.0 I used before.

I was wondering the same thing and asked that question earlier about the difference between bulbs.
Thanks.