What do you guys think?

[Twiggy]

Hi! My name is Samantha and I'm so excited about being part of this community. My boyfriend and I have only had our two female leopard geckos, Cleo & Zoe, for about a month, but we're already in love with them

We've been working on their terrarium since we first got them and finally we're close to being done with everything and I just wanted to get some opinions. Especially if there are things that we should change.

We still need a background for the back of the terrarium, which we're getting tonight. It's going to be just a piece of black foam board. I'm in the process of decorating a bamboo shot that we're making into a half log to put in front of the rock hide. And we're thinking about making a new smaller hide to replace the magnetic rock hide in the right of the terrarium. We've had it in there for a week and they don't seem to be interested in it.

We made the two level rock hide in the back of the terrarium ourselves. We used styrofoam, covered in grout, painted it, then sealed it with about six layers of Mod Podge with a extra thick layer over the high traffic areas. We have our UTH under the rock hide with the moist hide under the overhang for the first level. We put in an interior staircase which they love (Found Zoe sleepy on it the other day :]) but they seem to pretty much ignore the outside staircases.

Most of the terrarium has slate tile for substrate and the pebbles in the front are smooth river rocks. We bought them online but still put them in a boiling pot of water for about 20 minutes before putting them inside the terrarium.

And I think that's it lol. I would greatly appreciate any opinions or ideas you might have. Thank you

 

[kevinb]

Looks good. I Would just be very careful with the river stones as the could be accidently swallowed and cause an impaction. I personally would hltake them out and just do the rest with aspen or the like....looks very cool though. Well done! :thumbsup:

Kevin Bullis

 

[OnlineGeckos]

Wow that looks really awesome. You are utilizing the vertical space, which I still have to do in my tanks. Even though leopard geckos don't have pads to climb, they love to go up and down and attempt to climb the rocks & plants. Using vertical space gives them just that much more room, and that many more places to hide in.

Very cool!

 

[kevinb]

I would also ditch the light as they are nocturnal and can get stressed out from it. Just my $.02 hopefully someone with more knowledge will jump in and help me out.

Kevin Bullis

 

[Twiggy]

Looks good. I Would just be very careful with the river stones as the could be accidently swallowed and cause an impaction. I personally would hltake them out and just do the rest with aspen or the like....looks very cool though. Well done! :thumbsup:

I would also ditch the light as they are nocturnal and can get stressed out from it. Just my $.02 hopefully someone with more knowledge will jump in and help me out.

Thanks for the concern. Aside from mealworms, we don't feed them inside the terrarium so we're hoping that will eliminate the chance of them eating one of the river rocks. And the rocks themselves seem a little too big for them to accidentally swallow but I'll definitely look into your idea.

Also I've been wondering if the light could bother them. They seem fine though and the light doesn't really get into the hide. And hopefully once we get the foam board in the back it'll stop what little light does get into it.

 

[artes]

The stress depends on the gecko. Some geckos don't mind light, some geckos are all "Grrr". So, just see how yours react.

 

[Twiggy]

Wow that looks really awesome. You are utilizing the vertical space, which I still have to do in my tanks. Even though leopard geckos don't have pads to climb, they love to go up and down and attempt to climb the rocks & plants. Using vertical space gives them just that much more room, and that many more places to hide in.

Very cool!

Thanks

We wanted to give them as much space as possible and some areas for climbing...hopefully they'll start using them soon lol.

 

[OnlineGeckos]

Thanks

We wanted to give them as much space as possible and some areas for climbing...hopefully they'll start using them soon lol.

They will, 1 month is a short time for them to get used to their surroundings. Once they get comfortable and settled in, they'll be moving around in no time. One thing that helps is to have a red bulb for night time viewing. Late nights are when my leos are most active. Having red light on at night allows me to watch them and see what they do.

 

[Twiggy]

They will, 1 month is a short time for them to get used to their surroundings. Once they get comfortable and settled in, they'll be moving around in no time. One thing that helps is to have a red bulb for night time viewing. Late nights are when my leos are most active. Having red light on at night allows me to watch them and see what they do.

We have a Exo Terra Night-Glo Moonlight bulb right now. Should we change it to a red bulb? Cleo comes out when it's on all the time so I figured that it's okay but if we need to we'll change it.

 

[OnlineGeckos]

They should be fine as long as your leopard geckos are fine with it.

 

[fuzzylogix]

looks good but i definitely recommend removing those pebbles. they can still ingest them regardless if being fed in another enclosure. if you like that look, maybe you could grout them together so that they aren't loose. other than that, just go with tile. and i would never use aspen for leos either. are you using an under tank heater for your heat gradient? a low watt viewing light is ok, but i would stay away from anything bright.

 

[Twiggy]

looks good but i definitely recommend removing those pebbles. they can still ingest them regardless if being fed in another enclosure. if you like that look, maybe you could grout them together so that they aren't loose. other than that, just go with tile. and i would never use aspen for leos either. are you using an under tank heater for your heat gradient? a low watt viewing light is ok, but i would stay away from anything bright.

I thought I put it in my original post, but we have an UTH under the two level rock hide. We keep the heater between 90-93 degrees on the first level and the second level gets between 80-86 degrees on the second. We put the magnetic rock hide on the cool side but they don't use it at all so we're going to replace it with another custom made hide. And I'm working on another hide to put on the cool side. Although they spend most of their time on the warm side.

Do you know any threads about grouting rocks together, because I'm not really sure how to go about doing that.

 

[blueappal]

I think the light is fine... as long as it's not ridiculously bright like the poster above said. You have plenty of hides for your leos to escape from the light if it's bothering them... so I believe it's a non-issue.

 

[Twiggy]

I think the light is fine... as long as it's not ridiculously bright like the poster above said. You have plenty of hides for your leos to escape from the light if it's bothering them... so I believe it's a non-issue.

Okay...thanks. My boyfriend and I are both new to leopard geckos and we just want to make sure we're doing the best we can for them.

 

[Wowoklol]

Aspen for Leos substrate? Eek. Not sure many people would recommend that. I sure wouldn't.

 

[cinderbirdswing]

I love the hide! it looks fantastic!

I'll also voice my opinion on the removing of the river rocks. Tile is nice and natural looking and holds heat very well. It's also super easy to clean. I use it for my bearded dragon.

 

[fuzzylogix]

Do you know any threads about grouting rocks together, because I'm not really sure how to go about doing that.

i would just get a piece of wire mesh, cover it with grout, and press the pebbles into it.

 

[Twiggy]

i would just get a piece of wire mesh, cover it with grout, and press the pebbles into it.

One of the reasons we got the pebbles was to make that area deep enough to hold the water dish. We tried making a holder for it out of styrofoam and I was just going to glue somes pebbles onto it but it didn't really turn out how I wanted it to. We didn't even think of wire mesh. Maybe that will work better. Thanks for the idea

 

[Twiggy]

So we took out most of the river rocks and replaced it with more slate tile and we're going to be working on a holder to replace the rest of the rocks with. We're hoping to have it finished by Monday and have it in the terrarium by the middle of next week.

Here's a picture of the half log I said I was working on. The outside is covered in grout to give it more texture for climbing. It's not quite finished though, still needs to be sealed and I'm gonna adhere some moss to partially cover one end and to cover a little miss up on the back lol. What do you think so far?

 

[PaladinGirl]

Very nice set up, very creative!