Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was wondering if anyone could give me some ideas. I need to build a cage set-up for 2 beardies, one male and one female so they need to be different cages. I currently have them in seperate tanks, and I would like to use the same dome reflectors and the tube uvb lights. Maybe I could build them one on top of the other?. I want it to look nice, no wires or reflectors showing. I also want to continue using sand for a substrate, so a deep bottom is necessary. Anyone with experience building something like this? I would like to also make the inside as natural looking as possible, not just plywood or white melamine. So all you creative beardie owners, your thanks in advance.

I have a cage built for two beardies (ok, I need to put the hinges on one door). It's kinda in a shelf setup. I put one cage one top that is 4x2x2. I left the top of that one open for the lights. I have no substrate in it, but I supppose you could do that by putting a lip on the front to hold it in if you wanted. I have the dome reflector resting on top, and the uv strip inside. Again I am sure you could put another lip on top to hide these things. In between the two cages there is a 1x2x2 shelf area to keep supplies. I really like this because it means I never have to go hunt down anything I need for the beardies. You may want to put this shelf at the bottom if you should choose to have one, because as I realized later on, it's going to be annoying to get the beardie from the floor level cage. Then the bottom cage is a another 4x2x2. The shelf bottom forms the top of this cage. I made a hole for the dome reflector, so i'm pretty much just going to jam that through the hole and screw the reflector on from the other side. Again my uv strip is going along the back on the inside. This also haas no substrate. I just spray with some water and pick it up with a paper towel. In the top cage I have one large lift up door, and in the bottom I have two smaller doors that swing out like cabinet doors. I built with wood that was precut at the store. The only tools I had at home were a hand saw and an drill, so things don't look as good as you could get them if you had all the tools at home to do this with. Still, I think for something built with so few tools and mostly on my own (except when I need something held still) it didn't turn out too bad. I didn't have the money for sliding glass, nor would it have worked because of my lack of tools, or I would have done that. I think one of the other members here has two deck ccage that is really nice, but I forget who that is. Hopefully they will post a response to this. Anyway, the full dimensions of the entire thing are 4x2x5. The only differences I would have made would be putting the shelf on the lowest level, and maybe putting wheels on it, because it is awfully heavy.