I have to agree with those who said not to bother with the starter kit. I got that exact same kit and I'd say close to a month into having my first beardie, the only parts of it I was still using were the tank itself (since replaced) and the food dish. Here are my recommendations for starting items:
- If you want to build your own viv, the link to the crossfire plans is a great one.
- If not, then you want a "40 Gallon Breeder" tank. That's the minumum size for an adult beardie and will keep you from having to replace it as he grows.
- I'm a big fan of splurging on a timer for lights. It's best for them to get regular amounts of light and dark each day and can be hard to keep to a strict schedule manually.
- For your heat lamp, you will need a dome fixture. I HIGHLY recommend getting one with a dimmer on the cord so you can fine tune the temperature. You'll want at least a 75 watt bulb, but if you get a dome with a dimmer, you can take it all the way up to 150 watt and then just dim it down.
- For your UVB fixture, the cheapest and easiest option I've found is this fixture from Walmart: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Lights-of-America-24-Fluorescent-Grow-Light-Fixture/16879945. Just throw out the bulb and cover and get the 24" Reptisun 10.0 bulb for it. Then wire it to the underside of the screen in your viv, or hang it from the ceiling in there if you choose the crossfire option. You want to hang it as close to your heat lamp as possible and over to one side of the viv, so there is a place on the "cold" side of the viv with no UVB in case your beardie wants to get out of it.
- For your thermometer, get something like this: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Digital-Thermometer-w-Humidity-Gauge-Clock/17382579. Place the unit on the cold end of your viv and the probe on the basking spot beneath the heat lamp. The "indoor" temperature will be the temp on the cold side and the "outdoor" temp will be the basking temp. You want the cold side to stay in the 75-85 range and the basking temp to be 100-110.
- For the bottom of the viv, you have a lot of options. Paper towels (whole not shredded), tile, reptile carpet... My personal favorite is Duck brand non-stick shelf liner. If you go the shelf liner route, make sure you get the non-stick kind (the glue can be toxic). The great thing about shelf liner is that it is pretty durable and incredibly easy to clean, but cheap and disposable as well. Plus it's easy to cut to size. This is the kind I'm using right now from Lowes: http://www.lowes.com/pd_171589-1451...L=?Ns=p_product_qty_sales_dollar|1&facetInfo=
- As others have mentioned, thre's no reason to keep a water dish in the viv. Beardies won't drink from standing water and it will likely just raise the humidity (which you want to keep below 40% so try to get a digital thermometer with a humidity read-out). You will want some sort of dish for greens, but it doesn't have to be anything fancy. It should just be shallow and accessible.
As for crickets, my advice is to order them online. I got mine from Ghann's Cricket Farm
http://www.ghann.com/ and they were usually great about getting them to me alive. The couple of times I had problems with lots dying en route because of high temps or whatever, they send me a new shipment for free.
Don't bother with those little "Cricket Keepers" you can buy at the pet store. They are FAR too small for the number of crickets your baby beardie will be eating. Get a couple of large, DEEP, clear, RubberMade tubs. One you can use to house the crickets in and one you can use as a feeding bin for your beardie. The one you house the crickets in, either cut a large hole in the top and cover with mesh screen or drill a bunch of TINY holes in for air to get through, but NOT crickets. Save every paper towel roll you have from now on. You will want a couple of shallow dishes to use for food and
hydration for the crickets. I actually wasn't a big fan of the orange cubes, because they were pricey and didn't last long. Instead I went with the yellow gel in one dish for
hydration, and then the powdery meal stuff (
http://www.flukerfarms.com/hi-calcricketdiet.aspx) for food and gutloading.
Once you have your bin all set up with a food dish, a gel dish, and some paper towel tubes, it's time for the crickets! This takes some practice, so I did it outside the first couple of times. When the crickets are delivered to you, they will be in a cardboard box with a few layers of egg crate. Cut the packing tape with a box cutter, but hold the box closed! Flip it upside down and try to very quickly pull the flaps open. The egg crates with the majority of the crickets should fall right down into your bin, but there will be some hangers on who you will have to shake loose. Those crickets are expensive, so try not to let too many get away! Once you get good at this, you can likely do it inside without losing more than a cricket or two.
Okay, now, the question is, how do you get those crickets into your baby's belly? This is where having two tubs comes in handy. Open the empty tub and set the lid aside. Set it right next to the cricket tub. Open the cricket tub, but hold the lid over the tub at angle, so there's not much room for crickets to escape. Quickly grab a paper towel tube or an egg crate and snatch it over into the empty tub. Shake loose all the crickets (or as many as you want) into the empty tub then put the egg crate or towel tube back into the cricket tub. Now you have a bunch of loose crickets in the empty tub. This is where your handy dandy, amazing cricket scooper comes in. I got mine from Ghann's the first time I bought crickets. Here's the link:
http://www.ghann.com/store/store_product_detail.cfm?Product_ID=24&Category_ID=4&Sub_Category_ID=1.
With that amazing device, you can scoop up the loose crickets inside the feeding tub, then dump them into a bag or cup or whatever you're using to dust them. I was personally a fan of sandwich bags. Dump any remaining crickets from the feeding tub back into the cricket tub. Now, get your beardie and put him inside your feeding bin. Dump the dusted crickets in there with him and let him do his thing for about 10 minutes or until he looks like he's just no longer interested in the crickets. My guy would always go still and close his eyes when he was done eating. Put your beardie back in his viv, preferably on his basking spot. Dump the leftover crickets back into the main cricket bin. By doing it this way, you won't have to be fishing leftover crickets out of the viv and they won't be able to hide under rocks and logs and such.
I know this sounds like a crazy amount of work and it SO IS. But, fortunately, your beardie will grow up and eventually start eating his greens and you can switch to smaller quantities of feeders that are much easier (like phoenix worms or supers). It's just prohibitively expensive to try to buy worms in the quantities you would need to feed a growing baby, so crickets are a great way to go in those first 8 months or so. Oh, I almost forgot, you should be offering your baby greens every day and likely he won't eat much (if any) of them, so at the end of the day, dump the leftovers in the cricket bin. The crickets will gobble them right up and then your beardie will just eat them indirectly.
