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i have been wanting a uro for awhile, but ive been having difficulty finding information on them, i know about subtrate, food, and those topics, but not about lighting, i heard uro's have to have a certian lightting schedule, please help out if possible.
thanks
use a combination of incandescent and fluorescent lighting. You have to use the right incandescent bulb for the right size tank. In general a good set up would be a roughly 4ft x 2 ft cage, about 16 inches high. The lighting should be a double fluorescent strip with uv bulbs in it and a dome heat lamp with a bulb that produces natural light and enough heat to create a basking spot of 110-130 degrees. To recreate natural photo period plug all lights into a power strip whih is plugged into a timer. Set the lights to go on at 7 or 8 am and off babout 7or 8 pm march thru sept. In october reduce the photo period gradually, til you have the lights only on for 7 or 8 hrs a day. that is a good basic lighting formula, but everyone has their own opinion. 2 basic rules to follow. 1 the brighter in the cage the better. 2 make sure there is a temp gradient. one side of the cage 100-130 degrees the other side 80-90 degrees and you should be in business.
I would actually say that the cool side should be 80 or below.. Otherwise good info! 
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0.0.1 Egyptian Uro Zuberi Mosca Khu (Mosca)
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Indiana & Wisconsin
From Deer Fern Farms--->
Lighting/Heat: First and foremost, Uromastyx are heat lovers, the ultimate heat lovers! They must have a basking site that reaches between 110F and 120F (surface temp). No, that's not a typo, one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty F! This is actually easy to produce with a Zoo-Med or comparable reptile basking bulb (reflector or flood type bulb) shining over a smooth piece of slate or other suitable rock. Adjust the height of the basking light so that it heats an area at least as large as the whole body of a basking Uromastyx and make sure the light is placed high enough to prevent the animals from accessing it. Do NOT use hot rocks or similar "in-cage" electric underbelly heaters. These will not suffice and can cause serious injury to your animals. An under-the-tank heating pad is ok but only for supplemental heat. The overhead basking light is still essential. You're aiming for a general background temperature around 100F in the warm end of the cage, and the mid 80'sF in the cool end of the cage. This permits your animals to self-regulate their body temperature. Night temps should be much cooler, typical of their desert homes. Most people shoot for the low 70's in the summer, the mid 60's in the winter. Along with the basking lights, we recommend installing a UV producing bulb such as Zoo-Med's Reptisun 5.0's, Arcadia High OutPut UV or Mercury Vapor basking bulb. The usefulness of these bulbs is still debated and some breeders feel they are a waste of money ($20 to $30 ea. for Zoo-Meds, $45 up for Mercury Vapors), but the jury is still out. UVB initiates the conversion of vit. D3 precursor into active vitamin D3, and in theory these bulbs produce enough UVB to stimulate this reaction. However, for this to be reasonably effective, the bulbs must be mounted within a foot or so of the basking animal. Also these bulbs gradually loose the ability to produce UVB with use and thus should be replaced annually to biannually. Look for a change from bluish white to a clear white glow with age, faint blue tint = good, white = worn out). Some breeders choose to simply add vit. D3 to the diet and dispense with the bulbs. This approach also seems to work, but which is more reliable is still unknown. Regardless of how well UVB impact Vit D3 issues, strong UVB exposure does produce more intense pigmentation in captive Uromastyx. For some species, these alone may be sufficient justification to use the UVB-producing bulbs. In addition to UVB, these bulbs also produce UVA, which has been suggested to increase appetite and give desert animals a "psychological" benefit. Again the jury is still mixed with some swearing the bulbs help and others equally convinced there is no noticeable impact on behavior or health. We use a mixed approach. We feed low levels of Vit D3 to our animals (by dusting w/ Miner-AL brand mineral supplement w/ D3) while using Arcadia Hi UV compact fluorescent bulbs in all our cages.
Our data on bulb-generated UVB's effects are mixed. Some Uros seem to do better with the bulbs while others show no detectable differences with or without the bulbs. We have noticed better coloration in many Uromastyx exposed to strong UVB from Mercury Vapor bulbs or Arcadia bulbs and Uro pairs in cages with these bulbs tend (by coincidence or not) to be some of our better breeders. Uromastyx do detect the difference between normal "man made" light and sunlight and are unmistakably attracted to sunlight. Uromastyx raised outdoors in unfiltered sunlight are the most dramatically pigmented of all. Of the available commercial reptile UVB lights, the Mercury Vapors bulbs seem a better choice in open topped cages, however the cost and excessively short life span (most rarely last 6-8 months for us) make them impractical for us. The current wattages/sizes available also put out excessive heat and so are unusable in our solid-topped Vision brand cages. The fluorescent bulbs have minimal heat output and come in many lenghts and are thus more user friendly. Their useful lifespan however is often comparable to the Mercury Vapor bulbs. We use clear infrared bulbs for heat in our ground pens and standard silver-backed reflector-type bulbs for our oak cages and "Vision" brand pre-fab cages as the heat sources and compact Arcadia UVB bulbs for our UVB source. You can see some of our pens/cages in the various photographs throughout our web site.
For most of the year, we are looking to produce a 13 hour day and 11 hour night time period for all species of Uromastyx. You can shorten this by a few hours during the winter, but only if you don't mind the possibility of them cycling and going through breeding behaviors in the spring. This is NOT an option if you have multiple specimens of the same sex housed together. Going through a yearly full brumation cycle does not appear to be essential to the long term health of most Uromastyx. Seasonal variation in day length and background temperatures is probably a good idea, but for most pet owners, don't go below a 10 hour day during the winter or 68 F night time temperatures.
I run the heat and spots (which provide 90% of the tanks's heat) 12 hours on a timer. I have the UVB bulbs on a seperate timer at approximately 4-5 hours as I don't want to use up their "life" for the hours that they're not out.
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