So, Back to it

So...

Smudge is still not really eating as much as I would like, perhaps eating just one 'hopper every three days, which doesn't seem like enough to me....

However she is still looking healthy and plump and still seems very active, so perhaps I should put off worrying for a while. 

Back to the Smudge Saga, last time we had realised what a giant chicken-up we had made of the background, and having hacksawed off around a third of the background in order for it to fit, Smudge seemed quite happy with it, climbing all over, and attempting to get behind or over the background. As close fitting as the background was, there was still some gaps which meant that worms could crawl behind it, and the size of the background meant it was even trickier to remove in order to clean the viv.

 Smudge asleep behind the original background provided with the glass tank.

In the end, we decided to abandon the glass viv and the background, partially because of the reasons above, but mainly because the temperature was too difficult to maintain. We had the heat mat on 24/7 and the temperature really struggled to get into the high 20's (Celsius). 

The wood viv we replaced it with needs a lot less heating to maintain a decent temperature, and because we could cut holes in the wood we were able to mount the heat mat inside the viv, drill a hole for the cable, and cover it with a small section of vinyl flooring to spread the heat evenly. 

The Mother in law took the glass viv for Flick, and seemed to have more luck than we did, probably due to the fact that she has it positioned on a solid wood cabinet, where as we had it on a slatted shelf, and I'm sure a lot of the heat from the mat was escaping into the air. She also dumped the background and bought a little more furniture for the viv than we had, you can see a picture in a previous post.

So that pretty much brings us up to date, if there is any particular aspect of Leopard Gecko care you would like me to post more about, just let me know.