Poor Gideon thought my hand coming towards him was the scariest thing in the world the first few times lol! He was so used to being picked up from above he kept flinching every time I reached in x) He's calmed down about it now though, this morning I woke up to watch his head poking up from the litter guard as he checked it out, it was cute.
As for the lamp, it's not pretty but it works and is safe (atleast it held up during some intense tugging and swinging tests), the mesh is tightly pinched around the lip of the lamp and the wires that come down are pinched and twisted shut for redundancy, then they come up and wrap around a stick for about four feet of wire per side. Checking it is part of my daily cleanup as well.
Despite all of that it's not very pretty and it does have the potential to fail, right now i'm trying to figure out how to alter it, right now the only option is to hanging it with all the pressure on the wire, which I do not want to do and lacing wire through the holes at the top of the dome has proven a bad idea in the past. In any case this is just a temporary solution till I get creative enough to solve the issue. I hope that puts your mind at ease a bit
One option I may do is once he's fully grown i'll be doing a custom interior with a raised basking platform, at that time I will probably cut a large hole and simply place the lamp ontop like the uvb light is placed which would eliminate all my problems.
I'm open to any suggestions anyone may have regarding the lamp as it is now though!
look what you've done, aha!