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We bought him from Luke and Dan (L’N'D) when Sazzle bought Winter the Super Snow.

We also have a big garage which may become my studio to give us a spare room just for incubators and hatchlings.

The reptile room is possibly the largest of the three, there is no reptile anywhere else in the house so it’s quite good as guest who aren’t into reptiles don’t have to be intimitated by wild water dragons and bobbing beardies. It makes feeding time much easier as well although as soon as they all know the locust house is out, there is lots of scratching and shuffling.

I’ve took a few pictures to show the setup, we need to tidy up some of the wiring, it’s mainly just thermometer leads which make it look messy.

I bought a Lucky Reptile Fogger. I bored a hole in the back of the Viv and hammered in a 45 degree hose connector. I cut the hose down so it’s about 1ft long and connected it from the connector to the fogger.

I’ve set a timer to switch the fogger on for 15 minutes every hour. I give the enclosure a light misting every morning. Noodle’s humidity stays 75-80%. The dampness has gone and he seems happier now.

I took his Waterfall out as it was a bugger to keep clean. I think I’ll fit it when he has a bigger Vivarium but I’ll make a quick release kit for it so that I can clean it out every couple of days.

Noodles is growing well, I feed him Locust every other day now but he has mealies every day, he wasn’t really touching locust before and they would roam around for days. Now he runs down and eats them and looks so happy (although he always has a happy looking face, unless you accidentally turn his UV on at midnight, then he looks startled and looks like he wants to kill you with a big stick!

He’s such an awesome little Chinese Water Dragon!!

He hasnt been out much in the past week because we are moving house so there is lots of boxes for him to get lost in. I normally let him out, have a little run around, play a game he likes to call “catch me if you can” then he climbs up onto my shoulder and stares me out for a bit, before skipping back into his Viv. He’s well trained like that (I can’t take credit, he learnt the little routine all by himself)

On a less impressive Lucky Reptile note, his ThermoControl Pro II died the other day, it kept switching the timer devices off and on every 5 minutes. I took them off and put them on a manual timer for a few hours to give me chance to do a bit of Thermostat swapping. To my horror I had discovered that it had Failed ON rather than OFF (which apparently the MicroClimate kit does… Fails OFF, so you get cold Reptiles not baked reptiles). Luckily the heat bulb which is in isn’t too big so it only got about 2c hotter than he should have. I promptly swapped it for a Habistat one which I had spare.

I need to send it back and get a replacement. Sarah’s one for Dave the Beardie is still going on strong!

Autumn who hatched 28th April weighing 5g now weighs 10g and appears to be an Aberrant (unusual broken patterning) Normal

Lightning who hatched 29th April weighing 5g and had a very slow start … took her nearly 2 weeks to start eating but she is catching up with Autumn and now weighs 9g who appears to be a hypo snow

Daisy who hatched 21st May weighing 5g now weighs 7g who appears to be a hypo (poss hypo snow) 

Only time will tell as every day they are changing

All are eating well on size 1-2 locusts and mini mealworms

Check back for updates

It can be expensive keeping reptiles and it can be accessories which you over look that take those pennies away from you. At these times of economic crisis every penny counts and we are not in it for the profit, we just want to be able to offer accessories for a cheap price.

We’ve got a few suppliers lined up, the store is online but there is no way for you to pay at the moment as I’ve turned the feature off as I don’t want people giving us money for stock we don’t have yet.

I will post again as soon as the online shop is open for sales but you can check it out by going to the products page.

I moved his Vivarium into the other room so he’s there by himself now. Then I was faced with the problem of humidity (lack of it), I noticed his basking spot was getting much warmer and the general heat gradient was good and he seemed to come out of his shell even more. I did notice though that there was a bit of a pool of water below his substrate which wasn’t getting warm enough to evapourate and create humidity. Soggy flooring can harbor parasites and bacteria so this was at the top of my priorities to get sorted.

I went to see Luke and Dan at L’N'D exotics and bought a 2ft MicroClimate Heat Mat and a MicroClimate MiniStat 100 Thermostat for it. I also bought some T-Rex Forest Bedding aswell to try and lock in some moisture and stop the pooling occuring.

When I got home I put 4L of water in a bucket and threw the T-Rex ‘brick’ in. 30 minutes later I had a big bucket full of soily looking 100% organic Cocoanut fir. I took noodles out and put him in a Tall Funarium with some of his substrate then quickly took all his things out and cleaned everything down. I fitted the heat mat and Thermostat Probe, then put on a layer of the Forest Bedding about 1/2″ thick. I then put in his Branches, Banana Tree Root and Waterfall. I put the bark all around everything and it’s now almost level with the glass.

I put his water bowl in, gave it a good misting, put his food bowl in, turned the mains back on and watched how things went for about 15 minutes. I put noodles back in and he went for a climb.

About 30 minutes later and the humidity levels started rising. It’s now a day on and I’ve only had to mist once, It’s really holding the humidity and the heatmat and forest bedding combination just keeps producing humidity. I checked on him this morning, his humidity was at 75%. I’ve been out most of the day and when I got back his humidity was 70%. I’ve given his viv another light misting to do him for this evening and the night, we’ll see how it is in the morning.

His colours have really come out, but they did anyway after his first shed with me. The room he’s in now is a bit more Chinese Water Dragon proof. I’ve had him out about 4 times since he’s been in there. If his glass doors are open and my hand is in there doing something, he tends to want to come and sit on me. He’ll either climb up my arm, sit on my shoulder and look at me until he gets bored, then climb back in. Or he’ll use me as a lily pad and jump off then dart across the room. Once I catch up with him he’ll just jump into my hands without any fuss (not like a determined beardie with a mind set on escape). I think he just likes a bit of a run and jump around and trying to climb DVD cases.

He’s really friendly and doesn’t mind people at all. I’ve found he likes being stroked on the side of his head, he sort of nussles into your finger like a cat nussles into your hand. With him still being a baby It should be good news for the future, I’m hoping he’ll be friendly when he’s older as his tail is already getting long and powerful looking like a whip .

Luke and Dan at L’N’D Exotics in Mansfield woodhouse had some young ones in for £30 each so I thought it was about time I got it. I bought a 3ft High by 2ft Wide Vivarium from them along with lots of Branches, a Waterfall and Pump, UV Light, Bark Substrate and all the other bits, yesterday morning. I fitted a 150w Ceramic Heater attached to my Spare Lucky Reptile ThermoControl Pro II thermostat and set it warming up. I drenched the floor and branches to start building humidity up.

Me and Sarah went into Mansfield then to pick up our Holiday tickets, some Euros and some Clothes then went and picked up the Chinese water Dragon from them and took it back to mine.

He started eating straight away and loves his big Water Bowl. He was quite active last night for about an hour after his UV went out. I have to be very warey around him though compared to the Beardies because he can jump a massive distance and run extremely quickly (as we found out in L’N’D when Luke got him out).

Humidity was up at about 70% last night in his vivarium, I’m going to get a fogger though so I don’t have to spray as much. It’ll look great having fog at the bottom of the Vivarium as well.

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I have posted information Lucky Reptile, Microclimate & Habistat Thermostat Products.

I will be adding to this page as we discover new equiptment and I’ll post some information on how to best setup your thermostat (sensor positioning, etc)

Check it Out Here