My two cents are this:
I know what you mean wanting to a natural as possible vivarium. The sterile environment of paper towels and butter tubs is not appealing to either. That’s for rack set ups when your leos are in tubs and can’t be seen any way.
So let’s talk about setting up your vivarium.
Substrate: depending on the size of your leo you some options. For the smaller guys (under 50g) I would not use sand of any kind. But that doesn’t mean you have to use paper towels. You can use terrarium carpet, out door carpeting (the non looped kind) slate or tiles. I use out door carpet but I may switch to slate soon or calci sand in half the tank and slate in the other half. Another thing I have been thinking of is a mixture of calci sand and real big rocks. I mean rocks as big as the leo it’s self so thee is no chance of ingestion.
For food and water dishes rock type dishes look good but I save my money and what I do is set them down in the substrate so that they are level you don’t see them so it doesn’t matter what they are. So I am with the rest about dumping the water fall. It would create to much humidity and I know this for fact since I am looking at a exoterra water fall in a 29 gal tank with out the fogger on in my iggy tank and it is 75% and will go up to 90% when I turn the fogger on.
For light if you have live plants in the tank which is perfectly ok given the plat doesn’t give off toxin when touched by the leo since I seriously doubt they will be eating on them maybe tongue flick a few times and leave it alone you can put what ever plant you want to that is tacitly safe and will live under the vita light uva/uvb light. If you have no live plants use a regular bulb from home depot. Just to give viewing light. Again what’s the point in keeping the animals if you can’t see them? And the environment they are in. I assume since you said you work at a pet store you get a discount on your stuff, but I would still buy a home depot under counter fluorescent for 6 bucks than pay what ever going pet store price is for a light strip and it comes with a bulb.
For hides there is a ton of hides climbing braches ect that look great you choose and I would not bother with a basking light use an under tank heater and if you need some more heat on the warm side use a heat bulb that emits no light although that doesn’t really matter either if your house is like mine a “meat locker” what I do is use a regular bulb during the day to get the warm side up to temp and just turn it off a nite and the entire tank falls safely to around 70°F but if you do that make sure you not over heating. I have my heat light on one end not directly over the warm hide. And the only reason I have a heat bulb is that my house room temp is about 65 °F so one little 10/20 gal UTH has trouble keeping up even on the floor temps where it matters.
mat price
) and I know which types of plants I'm looking for, which will thrive in the arid climate and dry conditions that aren't poisonous or dangerous to them. I concede your point about the waterfall, however I just can't stand the waterbowl thing.. I'm just weird about that kind of thing, any other options or ideas you can come up with? I just really like a nice looking tank.. and I am also working on a 94gal corner stand for my day geckos.. =)
