Rainforest in a Box

Noodles has been settling in really well, I’d been finding it hard to keep the humidity high and It’s been taking lots of misting. His vivarium was on top of Mylo’s vivarium with Mylo’s vivarium being big, there is quite a bit of heat at the top of it. It was making the bottom warm but the stat wasn’t making the heater kick in much as the temperature where the probe was, was fine. So he didn’t really have a basking area. (His humidity was OK though)

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 .

Tags: Dragon, heat, humidity, mat, temperature, Thermostat, vivarium, water