i start taking my dragon outside for natural uvb because i read 30 min = 12 hours under the light and i live in vegas and it is summer and temps are around 100 107 degrees. but my dragon seems to bask for a couple mins then likes to hang in a shaded area on my clothes. so will he still be getting uvb if we hang in the shade ? he still gets his reptisun i just want to start taking him out because in his new cage his is about 12 inch away from the uvb light and someone said he wont be getting the amount he needs in a day being that far and at the moment mounting the light inside isnt a aoption. money tight sense i had to buy a new cage because he grew out of his 10g thankx
Unfortunately I don't have any concrete advice for your first question but I did want to offer this nugget of info.
Mounting the light inside the tank might be cheaper than you think. I got my fixture from walmart for 9 bucks, and bought a roll of plumbers strap from the hardware store for about 4 bucks. Wrapped it around the ends of the fixture, and added some double sided tape to make sure the fixture wouldn't shift in the strap. Then folded it over the back of the cage to create 2 hangers.
Does the zoo med fixture have one of those plastic hoods on it? I suppose it still could. Hard to say one way or the other without knowing the weight of it. The fixture I got from Walmart weighed less than a pound so I didn't have to worry about the metal bending, it was plenty strong enough.