Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am thinking about setting up some outdoor housing. I have had 2 people tell me that the humidity here in Miami is too high and their Beardies got had a fungal problem. In both cases the substrate was several inches of pea rock. According to them, morning dew is the problem. Any thoughts?????
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Bennett

www.beardiedragon.com

I would believe Miami is too humid in general. I doubt the morning dew is the problem, because Sandfire Ranch (that is Bob Mallioux's place right?) has outdoor enclosures in Southern California and there is certainly morning dew there. However, Sourthern California is essentailly a desert so it burns off very quickly and the rest of the day is dry, dry, dry!!
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Stacey

I'm in Saint Petersburg, not as far south but we get a lot of rain here and plenty of humidity.

I have heard in some posts here that in the wild dragons live in some places in AU where it's wet a fair bit of the time.

I think the real key would be to create an area where thye can get hot and dry part of the time....

some ideas I have been thinking of:

use some greenhouse panels to shelter part of the area from the rain.

in that area use large flat rocks to make the "floor" area

test the humidity of that area and try the dragons in it.

I bet that the heat from the sun plus the dry rocks could create a "micro climate" with very low humidity that would work well....

now you would need to take into account the areas prevailing wind and have some of the greenhouse panels on that side of the space also so block out humid breezes and rain.

by the way when I say "Greenhouse panels" I am refering to the fiberglass sheets used in making greenhouses, they a are flat 4'x8' sheets that are almost like glass.

you would need to keep a good sized area open and watch out for heat buildup!! you might even need to add a fan to move hot air out from the sheltered area....

flat rocks like large-ish slates would have almost no places to hold humidity and as they heat up in the sun will act to work with the heat to create a dry zone.
and with good placement would create some good "Hides" that your dragons will go nuts for!!!

anyone have any other ideas??
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