Overview

Setting up an enclosure is one of the most exciting parts of preparing to get a new animal, its a creative endevour and you can choose wether to put a lot of effort or a little effort into creating your animals new home. Its about mixing your own ideas and tastes with a flare of recreating the animals wild enviroment. What do i mean by this well you have the creative flare to choose the texture and shape of the overall enviroment but at the same time using scientific method you must think about the animals needs aswell. For example you might want to put a rock in a certain place but have you considered what the animal might do with the space? Will it use the rock in its position ect ect. Its a mix of experimenting and logical decision making.

Enclosure design

The first step to consider is are you going to make the enclosure yourself or buy a premade one? If you choose the latter consider the material that the enclosure is made of is it sutable for the animals needs? Will Glass make the animal feel to out in the open will wooden vivariums hold to much heat, is the animal terestrial or arborial, what space is the animal going to use? ect. If you choose to make one yourself you will also need to consider alot more fators than the prebuilt one such as durability of the materials used in its construction and is it escape proof.

Once you have decided what path to take and you have a built enclosure you can then consider the lighting requirements and the space they will take up, prepare to have these as dead zones in the tank, you cant use this space or anything within the upper limits of the animals heating range.

Drainage layers and substrates

The real fun begins here, the creative part. So considering this you will need to source what you need, in this senario i will explain in the point of view in creating a oriental long tail grass lizard enclosure, I have created my custom built 45x60x75 arborial enclosure box , its empty and i want to add the first layer of substrate. So considering that these lizards are living in grasslands in south eastern parts of asia with higher humidities we want something that will hold the water well throughout the day. They dont dig so we can use something like hydro rocks or orchid bark chips, this will allow for a layer of water to sit at the bottom and slowly be sucked up by the substrate keeping the relative humidity in the enclosure higher than the outside relative humidity. Once the drainage layer is on you can use a material like tulle fabric or a mesh net to keep the two layers apart from each other, you can then put the crestie life over the top 3-4 inches. If you want to be really fancy you can also add a small tube that goes down to the drainage later to top the water up through.

Example products from above

Materials and decor

We will be continuing with the example of the oriental long tail lizard and