Plant install, not great
After a couple of weeks we have decided its time to give Leon an upgrade to his little condo. The glass shelves were confusing him, the checker board floor was making me dizzy, and things just didn’t fit quite right. So it was time to make a change.
The first thing we needed to do was drop the tree through the floor of the iguana condo. The top of the tree was hitting the top glass, and when Leon climbed it, the tree would tilt and freak him out. He even fell once. So out comes the jig saw and a hole is cut.
The hole
You can see the advantage of having the cage lifted off of the floor. It gives me a lot of room down there to hide things, like the bottom half of a planter.
Much better
And now with the planter dropped in to the floor it is more stable and doesn’t hit the top of the condo any more.
The next step took a little more time. Leon wasn’t thrilled with the glass shelving that came with the case as a place to rest and hang out. He would get caught in a maze of glass walls and just stress himself out. I know, bad idea on our part to begin with, but that was all we had to start with. I picked up some 1×3 pine from the lumber yard and cut down several slats. I screwed those together to make him a large platform that was all wood to rest on. Once the platform was complete I added 4 12 inch furniture legs to it to make it stable and help it look nice.
The new level
Once all of that was done it was time to finish off the floor. I picked up 2 big bags of washed reptile bark and we covered the floor about an inch and a half thick.
Bedding
Then around the pool and the tree we built it up a bit more so that there is some contour to the floor rather than just a flat board.
Finally, we repositioned the condo so that Leon can see out the huge sliding glass doors to the back yard. He may not be able to go out and run with the horses, but at least he can look at them and imagine a day when he is big enough to eat one.
Since we got all of this done Leon has been on several trips around the cage, and right now he is back in the top of his tree. We still need to find a happy balance of heat and humidity, but I think that now that the major construction is complete on the iguana condo Leon will be a much happier lizard.
