Home Sweet Home (Part 2)

So now that we had the vivarium built, it seemed to us that it was looking a little.. plain. It needed a little pizzazz. A little je ne sais quoi. 

Le boring.

We collaborated on the background - I found a nice jungley photo (the one in the background of this blog) and trimmed it to spec, which Johno had printed at his work. Took him about an hour (or less) to put it on, even going over the vents to cover them. It came out beautifully!

Ooooooooh!

The current hides, we realised, were going to be too small for Ramón when he reached adulthood, but looking around (in pet stores and online) it seemed as though there weren't really many cost-effective ones that we liked. So off we went to Kmart to see if we could find something a little more suitable. A turned-over pot would have done nicely, but it wouldn't really have fit with the aesthetic we wanted for the vivarium. We did, however, find a very ingenious cold-hide :3

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The eye-holes were open when we bought it, so Johno popped the lenses out of an old pair of sunnies and hot-glued them in. It is now dubbed the Batcave. We also found a nice bamboo utensil-holder (made for holding ladles and other stuff) in the kitchen section which we thought could serve nicely as a larger hide for him. Unfortunately, it looked really out of place next to the rough branches and dark brown substrate. So I took to it with some paint and muddy water after we both had a go at it with saw, file and knife. 

We also cut off a part of it so that it would sit flat. 

In the picture it looks really obviously done, but..

It looks heaps good next to everything else!

His larger (he has two) water dish is just a granite feeding dish for reptiles. The substrate is Kritter's Crumble. He also has a verandah, which is basically a wooden placemat over the top of the heat cord, to stop him from coming into too much contact with the actual cord. 

The final result!

The thermometer to the right of the cage takes the temp for the cold side, as well as having a node just on the  basking spot on a knot in the leftmost branch. The heat cord is on a separate thermostat, so it keeps it well warm on the ground. It does tend to dry out quite a bit with the open front, so regular spritzing is a necessity (at least in winter) to keep the humidity above 60%.

Basking temperature node

Much easier to spritz directly through the grill. 

That was pretty much it. A few days later we put Ramón in - he was a bit wary at first but he'd fully settled in  48 hours later. 

We let him explore on his own, but it took him a while [i.e, FOREVER] to slither out.

And then of course he stayed in the toilet roll for a good half hour.