Greetings from The Netherlands!

[MetallicatTim]

Hello everybody,

I'm Tim, 27 years old and I live in The Netherlands
I like to talk/read about beardies, so I registered here.

I bought my first beardie in 2001, he was about 9-12 months old when I got him, they were not sure about his age. But he looked very healthy and was very active, so I took him home! In hindsight, I would really have liked to see him grow up from the beginning, but nevertheless had a very great time with Jaymz.

Meet Jaymz:

He was one big fellow!

Always very curious about what's going on in his home!

Sadly he got sick in 2008 and passed away within a day I really mis the fellow!
I could watch him for hours, just laying there or doing something stupid, like sleeping in the most impossible positions haha

Unfortunately I could not get a new beardie for a while, because of my housing-situation ( no room for the big tank at my Girlfriends house, where I moved to )
But now we finally have our own house and the tank is waiting to be decorated, so a new beardie can move in

Just for fun, this was the old tank, I build it from scratch and am pretty proud about how it turned out. It wasn't completely ready when I took the picture, but you'll get the idea
We used PU foam, layers of grout and a special spray-paint.

The tank is 200x60x50 cm, that's about 80"x24"x20" ( thank you google! ). My intentions are to fully decorate it in an Egyptian theme. Think pyramides, obelisks, tombes, hyroglyphs etc. etc.
I started to work with "mergel" ( Dutch word, I think you guys call it Marl ?!? ).

It's very easy to work with, I've cut these pieces with an old tomatoknife These are just test pieces, the actual pieces will be bigger or else I'm going to need 100's of pieces for the pyramide
I plan to seal the rock with either epoxy or some other sealant to make it waterproof and wear and tear resistent.

After this is completely finished and I've done the heating-testruns, I'm going to look for a beautifull Sandfire/red/orange beardie

Thanks for reading, I'm off to explore this great forum

Grtz Tim

 

[Nathan1995]

Hey Tim welcome to the forum. Jaymz looked like 1 healthy fellow, congratulations on that, and he lived to be nearly 8, so you must have been doing something right!

Your first viv looks amazingly professional, and your second idea sounds great, just as long as your beardie couldn't swallow any of the substrate of course, would be wonderful to observe; and if you're very childish like me, imagine him being a massive dragon attacking a tiny helpless village. :lol:

This forum is great, so much information, it's helped me out many times, got any questions just ask, welcome!

 

[MetallicatTim]

Thx!

Btw, I meant 2009, so he was about 8-9 years old Anyway, he has had a good life, I'm sure

Yeah, I'm going to start experimenting with sealants after the holidays, when that proves to be succesfull, I'm going in full work-mode and get this viv decorated as soos as possible!
I've noticed some things changed since I last got a beardie, like the choice of heatinglamps and UVA/B lamps, so I'll have to read up on that!

And I read the topic about using sand, wich could be bad, so now I'm thinking about using a tile/rock floor. Not sure yet what to do with that It has to work with the whole Egyptian theme.

 

[Nathan1995]

Haha yeah the impaction could be a slight little problem. I use ceramic tiling for my beardies.. but am stuck for ideas how you could make that into an Egyptian theme!

The UV lights are quite simple. Don't use coils, and get a ReptiSun 10.0, or a Arcadia D3 (for us here in UK, the Arcadia is more easily available). All others have incorrect output levels and can cause damage to your little guy!

I demand you hurry up, I want to see your handy work, and see a new beardie :lol:

 

[hypnotiq]

that viv is awesome! =) that egyptian theme is going to be fantastic! im with nathan i demand you hurry so we can see the awesomeness! my boyfriend and I have come up with a theme for our viv it's going to mario (beardie is named bowser) yes we are nerds lol =)



as the beardie gets older sand should be okay from what ive read. but you could always make it look like sand, if you use a special paint maybe do a grainy texture. I'm not real arts and crafty but im sure there's a way to do that. =) or you could make the inside look like a pyramid and maybe do "brick" on the bottom, and go from there. I don't know I'm just throwing some ideas out there =)

 

[MetallicatTim]

And I appreciate all the input! I'm not completely set on everything, so please spew all your idea's!

 

[MetallicatTim]

Haha yeah the impaction could be a slight little problem. I use ceramic tiling for my beardies.. but am stuck for ideas how you could make that into an Egyptian theme!

The UV lights are quite simple. Don't use coils, and get a ReptiSun 10.0, or a Arcadia D3 (for us here in UK, the Arcadia is more easily available). All others have incorrect output levels and can cause damage to your little guy!

I demand you hurry up, I want to see your handy work, and see a new beardie :lol:

Thx for the advice! I used to buy the long bulbs

Luckily now you can buy the compact versions, but maybe because of the lenght of the viv, I'm gonna need 2 of them perhaps?

 

[Nathan1995]

Unfortunately the compacts are not good for beardies (unless things have changed from when I last got my baby's their UVB's), as far as I know, every one on this thread says no to compacts, something to do with the output of UV being too high or something (perhaps someone with more experience can confirm this), but I assure you, the tubular bulbs are the ones advised on this forum.

In my own experience, I started with some compacts, and my beardies became lethargic and didn't want to leave their hides and get hurt by the light, when I changed to a tubular light they were completely fine!

 

[MetallicatTim]

The holidays are finally over! I received the epoxy resin, I'll be testing that on the Marl tomorrow, hope it works!
But still have to wait a whole week to really start off with this project, 'cause the store where I get the Marl is closed for the holidays and added another week into januari...

I did manage to get 2 test-pieces out of the leftover rock I got for free.
The actual pieces that will be used for constructing the pyramide will be around 4"x2" but I'm still not sure about the height of the pieces.
It could be like these below ( 1,5" ) or I could make them half of that, around 3/4". That will produce more layers ( 20 instead of 10 ), that'll look better but also means more work haha.

I'll open a DIY thread in the future