when my room temps where at 70-72f I used a heat matt under my cages, this along with my 25w basking worked well. the heat matt was on 24/7 the basking on a timer.

I eliminated all heat mats by raising my room temperature to 78f. all my lizards have NTL 78f except for gravid females witch I leave the lights on.



when I started keeping these dragons, all my cages where designed for varanids, 2 size 6L-3H-3W feet and 8H-6L-6W feet, sins I started demolishing the smaller cages, I started keeping dragons in the large walk inn cages, I those I kept one specie per cage 6.6,in these cages I placed several 6ft trees of various species native to Asia, the walls covered with multiple epiphytes and climbing plants, a large water cascade almost the entire back wall, these cages are built with floor heating, therefore ambient temps could be controlled easily and floods where use as basking along with multiple plant fluorescents. these cages are much better then zoo exhibits as they are designed for reptiles not peoples looking at reptiles.



none of the dragons did well in them, they proved to be highly stressed from crowding, in nature one male can have 20 times this space as territory and so can females, therefore all subordinated lizards slowly perished until one dominant male and one or two females remained. now my conclusion, this remaining pair or trio performs better in a smaller cage then in a walk inn enclosure, simply because stress is reduced.



the way you set up your lizards is up to you, my story today is the same story iv said before on this forum, if you understand it or not descent really mater, sometimes a keeper must experience on his own to fully comprehend group dynamic and stress relations.

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