New Enclosure - heating questions

[Josammax]

I am almost finished building a new enclosure for my son’s northern blue tongue (will post pictures soon)

It is made out of 15mm plywood with vents in the side panels. The enclosure size is 1500mm long x 600mm deep x 575mm high, I have made a background and 2 awesome hides out of foam and a tile for the basking spot.

I plan on using 2 x 75 watt heat lamps for the basking spot and a 150 watt ceramic in the centre - the ceramic is to be controlled by a thermostat.

I would like some advice on the temperature gradients required: basking spot - middle - cold end

[Richard.C]

you will get a few different answers to that question,alot of people keep them quite warm,a narrow temp gradient ,main thing is give them a basking area of around 100 degrees and plenty of room to escape it,say down to 75 to 80 down cool end during the day

nights around 75 should be fine in active period

i keep my big northerns in 6 to 7 foot long cages, with a hot basking spot at one end of cage,its quite cool here,so my low end temps are very cool for probably 8 months of the year

i dont offer night heat so they cool right off over night,northerns are quite forgiving in regards to temps for a tropical occuring animal,making them a great species for captivity

my suggestion would be set up cage and test your cage temps at various spots,you may not need so much wattage to heat your enclosure,your cage sounds great,would love to see some pics

[Josammax]

Almost finished, just got to hook up the thermostat and play around with the temps, at the moment the basking spot temp is 50c which is too high so I need to replace the 2 x 75 watts with 2 x 60 or 50 watts.

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