Need advice on timer, feeding time, and night temperature

[mudskipper]

I have been reading about beardies for a couple of months now, but I have not bought a beardie yet. I think they are adorable and I would really love to own one, but I wonder if I should because of my schedule. Here are my questions. Any advices or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

1) I keep reading that a juvenile beardie needs to eat 2 or 3 times a day. How do YOU accomplish this if you don't work from home or if you work late? Along with a salad dish, can I leave a dish filled with dubia nymphs in his tank just like how I leave mealworms in dishes for my leopard geckos? So he can eat anytime he wants. I can find a dish that dubias can't climb out. If the dubias are all eaten, I can feed him more dubias when I get home in the evening. After a week, I should know how many dubias to leave in the dish. Would this work?

2) Which leads to the next question, can I set the timer to automatically turn on the UVB light and the basking lamp to be on from 10 a.m. - midnight? It's still 14 hours as instructed on care sheets except a few time zones behind.. LOL... My apartment is in the basement so there's no natural light. This is what I already do on all my fish tanks so that I can feed them at night when I get home, which can be 10 p.m. a couple of nights a week. I would be playing with him and bathing him in the evening, too. I also have a dog, and he follows this schedule as well. Would this work?

3) I have read a few posts that mentioned that the heat lamp should stay on at least 2 hours after the last meal so the beardie can digest the food. What if I also use a heat pad with a thermostat to always keep the warm side at least 90F like in my leopard gecko tanks? Every care sheet I have read says the minimum night temperature should be 65F, but no one has ever talked about the maximum night temperature. Would the warm temperature keep him up?

Thank you!!!

 

[Goodtruant]

1) We feed our beardie twice a day. My wife feeds Draper in the morning before she goes to work, since I'm up and out of the house before his lights are on. And since I get home first, I feed him in the evening. We always put a fresh bowl of greens in his viv everyday. We do leave a dish with dubia's in his viv. We dust them with a multivitamin and/or calcium, and put a little bit of his greens in the dish also. We use a ceramic dish with steep sides, they cannot climb out. Kinda like these: http://www.amazon.com/Set-of-4-Porcelain-Ramekins/dp/B002UED880/ref=sr_1_7?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1344583169&sr=1-7&keywords=Ceramic

2) As long as you keep the lighting pretty consistent, that's totally fine.

3) Beardies need to get warm then have a temp drop at night to get a good sleep, and helps their metabolism and and immune systems. Keeping him warm all night will disturb this. He will need the higher temps in the first 1.5-2 hours after eating a big beardie meal. This kind of messes with your bath and handling time, but if this is only a couple days a week, you might just let him be for those days. Leave the handling and baths for the other 5 days that you're home earlier?