Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I have a one year old Bearded Dragon which needs a new enclosure. I was thinking of buying a 175 gallon 30x30x48 screen terrarium. This way I can make his setup more elaborate and give him higher areas to climb then what an aquarium will allow.

Since the screen does not hold heat well. How would this work???? I was thinking of buying 2 basking lamps and the standard uv bulb which fits in a valence. Can anyone give me their ideas on this?

I would buy a tree/large stick setup that would put lizard as high as 42'' leaving 6'' between him and the lamps. Would it be too cold at the bottom of the cage?

How can I make this work????? Could use a space heater for the bottom of the cage

Thanks for any help anyone can give

Glenn

I put a couple of my dragons in Reptariums when they first came out. One of my female dragons is now missing 2 toenails, as she'd climb the screen and get caught, and lost her toenails getting herself free. No more screened enclosures for my dragons!
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1.0.0 Dumeril's Boa, Bruce
1.0.0 Mexican Kingsnake, Vincent
1.0.0 Graybanded Kingsnake, Boris
1.1.0 Ball Pythons, Pete & Frank
2.3.0 Bearded Dragons, Bela, Sally, Caijun, Phoenix & Spook
0.1.0 Fattailed Gecko, Sahein
2.0.0 Rats, Captian Howdy & Despero
1.0.0 Pushy Lovebird Baxter

With a one year old Dragon would his nails still get caught?

How did you heat the enclosure? did you find any problems? I live in Sudbury, Ontario and it gets quite cold

Dragons need more floor space than height, so at best, if you do buy the screen terrarium, lie it down on it's side, so you have 48"x30" of floor space and 30" of height. The one thing I am concerned about with these cages, is the screen itself. It's a sort of plastic/vinyl and with the heat needed to warm a dragon's basking spot (95-115F) could melt the screen, especially if it gets in contact with either the bulb or hood.

Because it's all screen, the heat will escape constantly, so the only way to maintain temps would be to heat the room the cage is in to 70-75F to minimize heat loss in the cage. Then you can raise a basking spot to the required 100F or there abouts.

The point of claws getting stuck and dragon's loosing toenails won't matter on the dragon's age. The screen is a double woven mesh with various sizes to the openings. It's a consistant pattern but there are small and big holes between the mesh for dragon claws to get caught in.

In the long run you would be better off building your own cage. It is alot cheaper to make it out of wood, whether kiln dried pine or spuce plywood or melamine. You can make a partial screen cage, solid on bottom, sides and back, with screen doors and top. Hardware cloth (1/4" wire mesh) can be used on part or all of the top or having a solid top and mount your light fixtures to the underside of the top.

On more point about the screen cages I didn't like. I have seen the size of screen terrarium you described setup in a petstore. It had a black tree monitor in it, the interior was very dark, even with a basking light and UVB bulb shinning into it. it might be how they had set it up but the cage was gloomy, nothing like the bightness dragons need to thrive. The top was well light but the bottom is dark. Since you can't mount the lights to the cage, you either have them sitting on top which most likely will melt the screen or hanging inside where the dragon could get into contact and burn himself. The black tree monitor didn't look very good either, he had major nose rub damage on his mouth, which was red, swollen and looked painful. I really don't think a dragon, or any sun loving reptile, would do well in these tanks. It may be find for chameleons, who like alot of cover and hides, or nocturnal lizards/snakes.

I have never used these cages myself, though I have considered getting one for my crested geckos but the cost isn't really worth it. Using wood and regular aluminum screening, I can build one for much cheaper. I am no building wiz, so building any sort of cage takes alot of planning to make sure all the measurements are right and to make sure I can build what I want with the limited amount of tools I possess.
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PHLdyPayne

Thanks for the reply. Some good points to consider.
I forget to mention that I will have an enclosure built to go around the screen, on the sides and back made out of plexiglass to help keep the heat it. Also, I will be using 4 basking lamps at the top of the screen cage.

Was thinking of also getting a plexiglass bottom made instead of using the soft tray that they sell with the cage, this way i can attach the heat pads to the plexiglass to create more heat to the bottom of the cage.

Would this help solve some of the problems?

Thanks

Glenn

If you are going to build enclosure around the reptarium why do you need it on the first place? You can just put a screen wall for him to climb, if that's what you're after. I live in Florida and keep my beardie in the screened enclosure that I've built with plexiglass bottom covered with non-stick shelf liner. He loves to climb on the walls and because it's pretty warm down here I don't have problem with keeping temps up. An inconvinience that I came to realise afterwords is that crix and worms are exellent climbers and they're running for their lives up the screen wall and my dragon is too lasy and spoiled to climb after them, so it's my job now to knock them down where he can reach them. About the nails getting stuck... I used aluminum( I think) screen, so crix can't make holes in it, and he's doing just fine going up and down. He likes to sleep hanging down too
Irina