finally brought one home

well, after months of deliberation and planning, my bf and i brought home a Chinese Water Dragon today. it's missing a tiny piece of its tail, which is healed quite nicely, and other than that, seems perfectly healthy, though i plan to take it to the vet pretty quick to have checked out just in case.

The little guy is about 3" snout to vent, and has beautiful blue-green stripes and cheeks. it seems pretty happy with its new home so far, though we are having a bit of trouble keeping the heat/humidity up quite enough... i may have to go buy another heating bulb to help out, and plan to cover part of the tank pretty quick to help witht he humidity. right now, humidity is at ~65, and temp (with lamp on) is at 78.
i'm using a 150 watt bulb now... any suggestions as to what wattage i should add to that to help with the temperatures? and what about nighttime temps - how do you keep the temperature up high enough - do you keep the heating bulb on all night if needed, or maybe one of the bulbs if i get another one? I want to make sure my new guy is as happy as possible with us, so any help is much appreciated, thanks!

hopefully bf will find his camera, and we'll get some pics up soon.

you could consider getting a Ceramic Heat Emitter or a undertank heater. thats what i use and its great for nightime

thanks Cody! I was thinking of looking into an undertank heater, but hadn't decided. I will probably go with that (or at least a heating pad under the tank What's a Ceramic Heat Emitter?

Congrats on the new addition

A word of warning if I may lizards cannot feel heat from their underside so I would asvise agaist the use of a Under Tank Heater for any lizard sp. If you are going to use one make sure that you use it in conjuction with a stat, make sure the probe of the stat is in contact with the surface of the Under Tank Heater.

Congratulations! Post pics soon!

As Joe said, would avoid Under Tank Heater with lizards, unless you are going to use a thermostat with it.

At night you must not leave a bulb on - the light will interfere with the lizard's photoperiod and sleep patterns. There are nighttime bulbs that you can buy, or a Ceramic Heat Emitter can be left on all the time. Nighttime temps can drop a little, as they would in the wild, but you don't want to let it get too cold.

How big is your enclosure? What are you using to test the temp?

Good luck, I hope the little fella does well with you.

hmm... good point about the Under Tank Heater... I'll be going to town today, so I'll see what I can dig up. I haven't really looked at Ceramic Heat Emitter's before. Is there a certai type I should maybe be looking at? A Wattage or anything that i should try?

For now, while it's still small, I have it in a tank-enclosure, measuring 3'x1'x18" (lxwxh). I'm using a kitty-litter pan as a pond, and have two spider plants in the tank, which it already seems to love to hide and sleep in. I have an artificial log-thing from the petstore for climbing, which has a branch reaching under the heating lamp, and a branch leaning over the water. I have a soil/grass substrate right now. For temperature guage, I'm using a thermometer stuck to the side of the tank, as well as a similar hydrometer for humidity.

Thanks for the suggestions, any other help will be greatly appreciated

Ceramic Heat Emitter is a Ceramic Heat Emitter. Looks and works like a light-bulb but doesn't emit any light, just heat.
Beware that these usually get very very hot and will cause severe burns if you or the lizard touch it.

As for wattage, it depends on the enclosure size. Bigger wattage means more heat but also a larger energy bill at the end of the month. You can buy a 160W and a rheostat to control the temp to your liking.

I have a 100W infrared lamp in a tank slightly bigger than 2'x1'x1' and I've never put it at full strength, half at night and 3/4 during the day for the proper temps.

Mookins:
I thought my son was a nut when he bought Kiko home. I fell in love immediately! Shes 19" now, I keep her humidity I guess pretty high @80%, heat @80-85.

well, bought the Ceramic Heat Emitter and a rheostat today, it seems to be keeping a good night-temp (~78 degrees), so i'll just have to see how it does in the daytime tomorrow in conjunction with the other lamp. The humidity's doing better now, too... tried a few tricks, got an air-pump with a aerating stone for in the pool.. that seems to be helping alot. yay!!

we've tentatively named the little guy Biscuit-Lemming (couldn't decide between the two names, so combined them [at least until we choose one or the other]) but we'll call it Bill for short :grin:

Bill seems pretty happy in his new home. he crawled up onto my hand when i was putting the aerating stone in the pond. starting to follow me around his cage; seems very curious little guy! eating pretty good right now too, 1-3 crickets a day so far. i was kind of worried about that (petstore said they were feeding him 1 cricket every other day... that just didn't sound right for his size!).

in other words, all seems to be going great with our new addition! Thanks for all the help, everyone!!

Glad to hear your sorted now, hope the little guy does well for you, love the name!

Just one thing - you didn't mention a UVB bulb or tube in any of your posts, you are using one aren't you?