Is it good for a baby cham?

[rcagosto]

i bought a 38 gallon repterium cage, and i was wondering is that good for a baby vielded cham?

 

[Julirs]

I have used them for all of my young chams, and am still using 2 of them. It is a perfect size for an 8 week old Veiled, for instance.

 

[rcagosto]

thanks its that i ws looking at itand it loked a lil big for a baby lol. im going to cup feed and i have the cage alright i guess. i dont have him yet so im still setting up. let me pos pics to see if its all right in the inside of the cage. im going to have a reptisun 10.0 compact bulb and a regular white incandecent bulb for heat. im going to pre check temps and everything before i get him in the july 8th reptile show.

 

[Julirs]

I would scratch the compact bulbs-they are not getting good reviews. The one issue with the Reptariums is that they have dark mesh. You will need plenty of lighting to see into it well. I use 18" Reptisun 10.0s as they fit on top of the 38 gallon well, and I used 2 clamp lamps with 60 watt household bulbs for basking and added light. Here is a pic of one of my early set ups. I ended up filling it up with plants.

 

[rcagosto]

dam, thats going to set me back then. i just dont want it to go to waste. you sure its that bad? if it is, what cheap hood can i use, something that would reflect and send light through the cage. this is it the other day before i got my soft tray i was just trying to work on some kinks an see how i would set of the plant.

 

[Julirs]

You can get a hood on the online reptile stores for about $25.00-but it will be worth every penny. The bulbs are right under $20.00. These are not cheap to keep reptiles. I am even using a $6.00 Walmart fixture for one of my 18" bulbs-you can create a metal reflctor for it.

 

[sativa420]

i agree but instead of metal just paint it white. it will reflect light better than metal.

 

[rcagosto]

how do i upload pics lol

 

[Julirs]

I download to photobucket.com and then copy and paste the IMG line.

 

[Dave Weldon]

i agree but instead of metal just paint it white. it will reflect light better than metal.

Howdy,

Funny thing is that you'd think that white would be really good at reflecting various spectra including UVB, except that actual measurements show that an aluminum surface outperforms other surface colors. I took a couple of white plastic fluorescent fixtures and just added smoothed aluminum foil to the curved white plastic reflector surface and have been happy with it. You can do it with kitchen foil but if you are at the hardware store, buy a small role of sticky-back real aluminum foil tape used for heater applications. Home Depot sells it for around $6 a roll. I couldn't find the discussion of the "white vs. aluminum" that included the measurements but it was definitely the case. It was posted on the UVB Meter Owners Group forum last year...

More info:
http://www.uvguide.co.uk/fluorescenttubereflectortests.htm