The enclosure runs for a week. Then the animal comes home.

Most of what goes wrong in a first month is not the animal and is not the keeper. It is that the setup was assembled on the same afternoon the animal arrived, so nobody knows what the cool end does overnight, whether the thermostat probe is actually reading the right surface, or how fast the humidity falls when the furnace kicks in. A week of running it empty answers all three for free.

What has to be running, and what it costs

• A thermostat, and not the dial on the mat

  This is the single most important object on the list and the one most often skipped. A heat mat with no thermostat will reach 130°F against a glass floor. The dial printed on the mat is not a thermostat, it is a dimmer.

  $45
• Two thermometers, one at each end

  Digital, with a probe, placed on the surface the animal will actually sit on. The stick-on dial thermometers that come in kits read the air an inch from the glass and are wrong by ten degrees or more.

  $22
• A hide on the warm end and a hide on the cool end

  If there is only one hide, the animal has to choose between feeling safe and being the right temperature, and it will choose safe every time. Two hides is the cheapest welfare improvement there is.

  $18
• UVB, sized to the species and the distance

  UVB output falls off fast with distance and the tube keeps producing visible light long after it has stopped producing anything useful. It gets replaced every twelve months whether or not it still lights up. Write the date on it in marker.

  $40 – $85
• Substrate deep enough to matter

  Three inches minimum for anything that burrows. Loose sand for a leopard gecko is the one substrate we will argue with you about at the counter.

  $16
• A water dish it cannot tip

  Heavy, shallow, and big enough to sit in for the snakes. Cleaned daily, which sounds excessive until the first time you see one used as a toilet.

  $12

Three things sold in kits that we do not stock

• Heat rocks

  They have no thermostat and reptiles do not have the reflex that pulls a hand off a hot surface. Every reptile vet in the metro has seen the burns.

  no
• Coloured night bulbs

  Red and blue night bulbs are marketed as invisible to reptiles. They are not, and a lit enclosure at 2am is a stressed animal. If the room drops below the safe low, use a ceramic emitter, which puts out heat and no light at all.

  no
• Compact coil UVB bulbs

  Some produce almost nothing and a few older designs caused eye damage. A linear T5 tube across most of the enclosure is the whole answer and it is not much more expensive.

  no

Bring the numbers back to us

After the week, text or ring with the two readings, warm end and cool end, taken in the morning before the lights come on and again in the evening. That is a two minute conversation that prevents most of what we see go wrong, and there is no charge for it whether or not the animal came from here.