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Upgraded Leopard Gecko Enclosure

998 views 9 replies 4 participants last post by  wilkinss77 
#1 ·
@wilkinss77

We have a female leopard gecko in a thirty inch tank, and she has been getting a bit too active for her current enclosure, and it started to look really small with all the hides and decorations that we have in there. When we got her it was always a plan of ours to upgrade her tank in the future to support her growth, so we just got the new tank last week on a sale for half off. It is a thirty six inch, eighteen inch deep glass tank, and it is a forty gallon. We are in the process of setting everything up, the substrate is in, and we are playing around with wood, cork bark, and artificial plants.

I do have a few questions regarding her new setup, we want it to be as close to perfect as we can get.

1. Lighting
We are using a dome light suspended a couple inches from the screen top, with a bulb that supplies UVB. It probably won’t be very bright for the larger tank, so we were wondering if we could use an LED light meant for an aquarium, which is just plain light and nothing else. Would we be able to use that alongside the UVB bulb for extra daylight and viewing purposes? I don’t think getting another dome and hanging stand is an option right now, as my brother is the owner and his saving funds are limited.

2. Substrate
We have the substrate at about a half inch on the side with the heating pad for underbelly heat as an aid for digestion. The other side is three inches, and we wanted to know if we need more substrate or not? It’s ecoearth expandable coconut fiber substrate, very familiar with this stuff.

3. Heating
We read that turning the heating pad off at night is recommended also, we only turn off the UVB, but should we eliminate all heat during the night and switch it back on in the daytime?

Thank you!

Here are some photos of the tank in progress, we are working a little bit each day and moving things where we feel is best.

 
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#5 ·
You use a basking lamp set up over natural stone to create the basking spot, the lamp then also properly heats the rest of the viv, the lights are then set to turn off just after dusk and come on at dawn, along with a UV setup.

If the viv is correctly setup like this, the heat mat is a then just a waste of time, energy and money. The natural stone absorbs and releases heat and provides the warth to the underbelly for a Leo's digestion.
 
#6 ·
Well, like I have previously said, that did not work for us, and she is sensitive to most lamps other than what we have had now for nearly a year. She has UVB. We get advice from the YouTube channel, Leopard Gecko, she uses only mats for her geckos. The lamp and stone method is not the only capable way of providing the gecko with heat, so don’t recommend only what you know and use, because there are other options.

We found the mat works for us very well, so we are not going to decide now to switch when everything is working perfectly.


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