LA
Sliced cucumbers get swallowed without chewing.
Vary your iguana's diet for best results.
Aqualand strives to keep you up-to-date on what you
need to know to keep your iguana healthy and growing.
This page contains miscellaneous information you may know already
(but we want to make absolutely sure you know).
Not Cheap.
Your critter costs only 10% of what you need to spend to house it.
LA
Four feet long and still growing iguana.
Size. We
want to remind you that iguanas that don’t grow to six feet long still
get very large.
Full-Spectrum.
Incandescent (screw-in bulbs) are not full-spectrum EVEN though
they say so on the box. Most
do not produce the UVB your iguana needs to make good bones. Whoa,
dude. They make screw-in fluorescent light bulbs these days.
Misting.
Baby iguanas need more humidity than big guys.
Use a mister daily. They really like it.
LA
You can control your iguana by grasping his head.
No Meat. Iguanas
are folivores (they eat leaves). Please
don’t feed them crickets (way too much phosphorous) or barbecued ribs
(way too much sauce).
If you absolutely need to add protein to their salad, add some rabbit pellets as
croutons.
LA
Until they get used to you, iguanas keep a wary eye on you.
LA
Once your iguana gets used to you, she appreciates some attention.
Hungry Monster.
Your baby iguana considers you a big, hungry predator until he gets
to know you. He is a wild
animal in a stressful situation (alone and in the presence of a monster).
Note how they try to climb into unseeable places.
Some people recommend hide boxes for the little guys.
Feeding Time.
New iguanas will not eat in front of big predators (you).
Leave them alone. Feed
them
midday
for best results. If you feed
them last thing at night, they can’t digest their food until the next
day. A gut full of fermenting
green stuff can’t be fun. And
fresh food left out all night tends to spoil.
Biggest Threats
Low Temp:
Iguanas need 85o or higher to digest their food.
Three or four-year-old iguanas can withstand cool temperatures better than
the youngsters.
LA
Cucumbers contain little nutrition. As long as you vary their food,
they'll do fine.
Bad Food:
Improper diet ends their lives prematurely.
Too Hot. On
a long-term basis, 95o is too hot for your iguana.
Night Temp.
Let your temperature drop 10o during the night.
Turning off your incandescent lights usually does the trick.
NO Hot Rocks.
Iguanas live in trees not on rocks.
Save your hot rock for ground-dwelling lizards. And, keep it
clean.
Heat Sources.
Put a heat pad on one end of your iguana’s cage bottom.
Focus an incandescent light on the same area.
This lets your ig go to the cooler side if it wants to cool off.
Make sure your ig cannot touch the bulb.
They love to fry their hides on bare bulbs. Iguanas are not
very bright.
No Water Dragons.
Water dragons look like iguanas but don’t mix well.
They will tear the legs off iguanas and eat them.
Water dragons are much tougher (and smarter) than iguanas -- but then who
isn’t?
Cage Floor.
In spite of all the substrates available, artificial carpet works
best. Keep loose strands
trimmed (or the dummies eat them). Use
two carpets so the other one dries between cleanings. Carpets clean
easily with a scrub brush under running water. If at all possible,
clean it elsewhere than your kitchen sink.
Wood Floors.
Put linoleum on the floor of your wood cage to make it easier to
keep clean. Obviously, an under cage heater won’t penetrate a wood
floor. Heat it with light bulbs.
Climbers.
You cannot provide too many climbing surfaces.
Iguanas are tree dwellers. They
do not live on the ground.
Timers. Those
timers that turn your lights on and off cost very little.
Get one to put your iguana on a regular schedule.
More Thermometers.
Too many “I have a hot rock” people have absolutely no idea how
warm they keep their iguana. You
need a thermometer at the top, at the bottom, and in the middle of your
iguana cage.
LA
Obviously, Dudley is way past his tender baby years.
Low Bowls.
Use a food bowl no taller than a jar lid for young iguanas.
Make it easy for your iguana to see (and get into) his food and
water bowls. You’ll also
notice that they soon learn what their food bowl looks like.
(At first, they may not even recognize what is and isn’t food.)
Once they learn the drill, they’ll eat whatever you put in their
food bowl. Make it good stuff.
LA.
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