Hello and welcome - I am new here too. I just bought our little one so I can tell you what I paid. First mistake - I bought a 20 gallon long acquarium before researching better. It has a special lid for locking in and was about $70. The problem is that I should have gotten something more around 60/70 gallons since these guys grow fast. I bought some of that lizard cage substrate that is like indoor/outdoor carpet. That was on sale (and not available in my tank size) so I paid $11 and then cut it down to size. I bought two of those Fluker light recepticles for the spot light and the UVB and they were about $30 all together. The spotlight I bought was about $10 but it wasn't strong enough (50W) so I am using a red light one I had recently bought for about $18. If you don't waste money on the red, the right wattage are closer to $10, too. I sterilized a recycled (from a turtle set up) little anchored basking spot that costs about $12 and bought a natural wood log that fits the set up for $18. My guy likes that better because he can climb up under the basking light but when he gets warm he moves down to the other. I also put in a natural wood cave for about $8 that he gets in or on over on the cool side. Finally, my wife bought some kind of fake ivy decoration that was on sale for $5. It doesn't do much for me but my guy likes to get in it. All said, that's around $170. The problem is, I will need a bigger rig, soon. I can recycle a lot of what I have but I wish I had gone bigger up front. I also ended up getting a stand for the set up because I couldn't decide on a good place to put it. That was another $100.
After all the set up, I bought a cricket keeper cage - it was about $10 but I wish I had gotten a bigger one of those, too. The people at the store said that the beardies were eating about 3 crickets a couple of times a day. This guy ate 13 this morning so I think they were underfeeing him. You need supplies to keep the crickets alive and to gut load them, and all in that cost me $15. Also need to get calcium to dust them and I think that was about $5. Almost forgot - I bought a digital probe thermometer for $10 which is great for getting temperatures around the set up. The crickets were only $.10 a piece so 30 of them was $3 but of course my beardie is plowing through them so I will need to get more. My beardie was $60. I hear you can get better prices from breeders.
All said, you can do a lot better han I did, especially with craigslist and a little innovation.
