Come with me to set up my leachianus gecko's new habitat!
I first purchased the 2x2x4 enclosure from @zenhabitats
In my opinion, they're great quality and cost-effective for all that you're getting.
You do have to set these up yourself, but that's the case with most enclosures this size. And in my opinion when it comes to animal enlosures, the bigger the better. You might find some keepers that claim otherwise, and it's true they may be able to survive well and all with a smaller enclosure, but having room to explore and exercise is so much better for their mental and physical health. We see a lot of overweight reptiles in captivity as they often live sedentary lifestiles, with no real exercise as they often have their meals delivered directly to them.
The whole set up took me about an hour, which could have been faster if I had actually read the instructions beforehand.
Once the frame was set up, I added the plastic "bio-basin" that hold all the substrate.
For this species I'm a big fan of bioactive enclosures- this means having soil substrate with live plants, and a "clean up crew" made of springtails and isopods that help regulate the ecosystem.
I added quite a few pieces of corkbark and climbing branches.
One thing I loved about this habitat is that it has bars at the top to hang lights and plants from, which I ended up using to hang a pothos plant from. It helps keep the humidity up, which should be around 60-75%. You can check out my other video on Leachianus care, but these guys also need temperature gradient from 73-80 F.
I'm also using a SurSun UVB light from VivTech, one of my favorite reptile companies. Be sure to follow them for some really cool advances in reptile lighting and technology. Unlike other UV bulbs that only produce UV light for 6 months, these are known to last 4 years. For those that didn't know, a UV bulb can still emit visible light even though it no longer emits UV light, which is why we often see metabolic bone disease and why its so important to test your bulbs. But that's for another video.
Although leachianus geckos can likely survive without UV light, it's still thought to be beneficial and I only want the best for my reptiles.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
