Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am getting 2 baby WD as pets and am try to design them an indoor habbitat. I bought a book on WD and have read it through and throuh. I have decided to create a 7 foot tall by 3 foot deep by 3 foot wide habbitat, using pvc pipe as a frame and mostly meshing for the sides. I plan on having a water fall originating at 5 foot and casscading into different pools giving them multiple pools to bathe in. The main problems I am having is figuring out what to do about lighting, in a 7 foot habitat.

So question #1
How much lighting does a 7 foot tall habbitat need?

questin #2
I read that a WD needs 300nm of UVB light, what lights do you suggests?

question #3
Last question what kinda of time cycles is recomended for lighting? (Day/Night)

Any Help is appreciated. Thanks.

that will be a good size for when they're older, but for now you should put them in a smaller tank, 20-50 gallons maybe so that they can find their food and so you can monitor them.

for lighting, i'm not exactly sure, but not florescents, you will need a flood or spot, probally flood. zoomed makes an awsone lood for 50$, you only need to chang it once a year. thats what i use and they are amazing! i ordered mine from their catalog, you can go to their webite and order one for free. i would suggest getting two though because of the size of the tank and because you are getting two. - do you know the sex of the ones you're getting?

for light cycles:
14 hours light in summer
12 or 13 hours light in sping
10 hours light in winter
12 hours light in fall

good luck!

As mentioned, that's nice and big for the adult dragons (although maybe you want to make it a bit wider - after all, they'll be about 3 feet long full grown) but the babies will definately need something smaller.

Lights wise I use two heatlights (with white light) and a fishtank hood with a UVB reptile bulb in it. At night I heat them with just one red bulb, which is fine most of the time but on nights that are really cold I have to add another heat lamp.

My day/night cycle runs about 14/12.

Enjoy your dragons!

~jenny
-----
1.2.2 normal ball pythons (Cindy, Darwin, Periscope, and dah bebbies)
0.2 rescue chinese water dragons (Yoni and Linga)
0.0.1 Mountain Horned Lizard (Freckles)
1.0 rex rat (Scurvy)
1.0 gerbil (Yerbul)
0.1 mice (Cute Girl Mousy)
0.1 bunny (Spazz)
1.1 betta fishes (Vicious and Killer)
2.2 great danes (Shasta, Odysseus, Merlot, and Watson)
1.0 fat fuzzy mutt (Smokey)
1.1 cats (Thidwick and Turtle)
3.0 horses (Buddy, Sam, and Scout)
1.0 goat (Billy Jack)
0.0.1 chupacabra (it ate our chickens)

jenny.thegreenes.org

With that size of an enclosure I suggest something like a CHE (Ceramic heat emmitter) put on a thermostat, you may need a seperate basking light as well.. for UVB use tubes or a MVB (and MVB will give off heat as well, so take that into account)Since UVB doesnt get too amazingly hot, you can put one over the basking area, and another one somewheres else, we always had two in our 6X4X3 enclosure, plus a 150 watt CHE and a 75watt basking bulb...

Dont know anything about waterfalls that extravagant, sounds like a cool idea..

I do agree with possibly housing them in something smaller for now. I put a small one in that big enclosure, but we always did handfeeding so we knew how much they were getting.

Thank you all for your help and sorry I haven't been on in a while. I have finaly purchased my dragons from the local pet store; however, I have purchased 4 instead of 2. (Just couldn't bring myself to seperate them so, well I bought all 4) I have started them off in a 20 gallon long tank for now but plan on switching them to a 200 gallon custom enclosure much like the one I described(20 gallon long started leaking). Currently I have a Exo-terra combo hood with two bulbs (day--sun glo 40W/night--night glo 40W) and a tube (Repti-sun 5.0) as well as a 75W basking spot lamp.

The Dragon's names are as follows

Shamrock-(kinda our alpha male)
Chilly Dude
Sgt. Pickles
Vivica

Right now I believe we have only one male (Shamrock) who is much bigger than the rest plus is starting to show the right coloring for a male. We're hoping for 1 male and 3 females but are happy either way.

Well I have to get to work on their other enclosure. I will try to be online more often so I can check the boards.

Thanks;
William, Jessica, and the Dragons.