Part II Lighting and other supplemental Hardware

2 Lighting and other supplemental Hardware

Choosing the right light sources and techniques to control your environmental conditions is pretty essential to ensure the health of your flora and fauna hosted in your terrarium.

2.1 Necessary modifcations for a standard glass terrarium

For the optimal air condtionings needed for a phelsuma suited rainforest terrarium the standard 100mm wide perforated plate at the middle strip isn't suitable, to enable the necessary air exchange.

Also,- and may be even more important -, your reptiles need a suitable UV light spectrum to stay healthy. The glass platters at the top filters the UV spectres needed by the animals from the lightning installation, if placed outside the corpus (which is recommendable IMHO).

So you need to remove either the whole top or part from the corpus, and replace it with fine aluminium metal gaze.

Removing the silicon glued glass plates reads easier, as it actually comes out to be.
I had at least success using a solid carpet cutter. Start peeling out the silicone from the seams, try to get inside the seam with the blade while whle lifting the glass plate simultaneously.

2.2 The lightning installation

As mentioned before, the correct UV spectrum of your main light sources is essential for your animals, and flora as well.

Fortunately my sister left over a high quality HQI sunlight lamp to me. This model was desgined to be mounted hanging over an aquarium and is fully integrated in a case. It's just necessary to plug it to the power socket.

I have a second lamp, I had already ordered before I got the HQI, and decided to install both. This one is a Exoterra Solar Raptor lamp, which promises a pretty natural sun light spectrum, suitable for phelsuma geckos and other tropical animals.

At the left side the HQI lamp, at the right the SolarRaptor lamp
in a heatng cone bulb socket

To run the Solar Raptor, you need an electronic ballast. You cannot simply screw it into a bulb socket (though it fits), and plug it to your house power supply. Just look out for kits including the ballast, when you by the lamp. A small screw driver, and a dauntless cable cut at the bulb socket installed cable, should serve the rest well.

The electronc ballast placed before the SolarRaptor bulb socket

If I wouldn't have been that lucky about the HQI lamp, I had considered installing a second SolarRaptor maybe.

Though I have a 3rd lamp just purposed for heating a warming spot at certain hours. This one is nstalled insde the corpus (not yet, I have to update and illustrate this later).

To be continued wtith:

2.3 Humidty control