Basic Iguana Care

all right so today what we're going to do is a video about Pig wanna care this is a little red iguana care for red iguanas and green iguanas is pretty much the same if you're lucky and you have a blue iguana or an albino with water those are all iguana iguana which is fundamentally the green iguanas however obviously as you can tell they all come in a bunch of different colors this little guy here is a well started juveniles he is probably about 3 to 6 months old somebody just dropped him off and so he's kind of his aged a little bit unknown um but he's real big sweetheart I'm taking him home so you do want to help me name him just let me know alright so um they're care for them is gonna be pretty simple well not really honestly iguanas like this are honestly not the easiest animal to take care of they're definitely a more advanced species I have seen maybe out of the hundreds we've seen comes through I see maybe a handful of really impressive adult animals that were really beautiful well-kept pet adult animals uh it's just that they tend to eat a ton of space they need good lighting they need very good diet and they need good supplementation and they're not just the easiest thing ever to take care of because they do get 5 to 6 feet long and iguanas actually go through a puberty or an adolescent stage a lot like people do once they hit about 2 to 3 years old a lot of the times iguanas actually go through a phase where they've got testosterone or other hormones going through their bodies male iguanas especially for a period of time kind of lose it they tend to get a lot meaner or more aggressive they can be a lot more unpredictable they can get kind of nasty a lot of amount grow it but a lot of them don't so it's just something to be prepared for you know if you get that baby you raise up a really sweet mellow baby if you don't get the lights right if you're not caring for properly or even just when it hits puberty it just might not be the same nice animal that you started with so they're definitely a more advanced reptile species to keep but because they are a little bit more advanced because they are a little bit more intriguing in that manner they can be really rewarding if that's what you're looking for so if that's what you're looking for an iguana like this guy I like to set up my animals my basking animals with the power son if you've watched any of the other videos you know this is one of my favorite light bulbs for iguanas who like it really hot and really bright a power sun's pretty much perfect for a guy this size or even a baby the size cage that you're going to need is going to be at least a 4 foot long cage you know at least a couple feet tall relatively large honestly so this hundred watt power son is going to be plenty of heat for that sized enclosure uh pretty much if your cage is too small for you to use a hundred power son it's too small period for your iguana so you need to get a bigger cage it needs to be big enough to use this kind of light this is honestly going to be the most cost effective way to provide your iguana with UVB and heat so there's the power son and then I like using these dual deep domes just because it looks nice it keeps all your lights in one place and it's big enough to take both your power Sun and your night lights which is gonna be one of these nocturnal heat lights basically iguanas are from South America they're from a part of the world where it really doesn't get that cold at night you're looking at a drop - maybe the mid 70s at night so while during the sorry so what nice they don't need to be nearly as warm as they do during the day you do need to make sure that they don't get too cold either so while they don't need to have a basking spot from a hundred to a hundred and thirty degrees at night like they do during the day you do still need to make sure they stay between 80 and 85 on the hot side at night so that's where a light like this comes in handy pretty much when it comes to this stuff and the power Sun power Sun for daytime night light for nighttime problem on about a 12 to 14 hour cycle for dates daytime lighting and then the night bulb is just going to be basically whenever your power Sun isn't on the other aspect one of the reasons you're getting this big light which is typically a little bit pricier than your average basking bulb one reason you're getting that is because you're going to be supplementing with calcium that also contains vitamin d3 this is rectify I like it because it also has vitamins in it and for an animal like Anna which in the wild is going to be eating dozens if not hundreds of different kinds of plants and you take them and put them in captivity where we're repeating them maybe at best 10 to 20 kinds of plants and and that's high most people if you ask them can list off five plants that they're giving their gwinnett at any given time so you're definitely gonna want to make sure that you give them all a multivitamin so that way you kind of round out their diet now you pretty much the sprinkles on their greens once a day when you offer it to them when it comes to the fresh greens off from about 50 percent fresh leafy greens if not 70 percent fresh leafy greens and the rest of it can be either cheese grated or finely chopped vegetables just squash tomato carrots pretty much any kind of vegetable that's safe for you or the dog to eat mix it up you want to make sure there's a lot of variety and then you want to keep fruit you can add about 5% fruit to the diet you just don't want to go too crazy a lot of the Gowanus get really spoiled on fruit things like banana mango strawberries apples it's all really sweet but for an animal like an iguana that's all candy pretty much so just like you and let your kid eat nothing but candy you shouldn't let your iguana eat nothing but fruit there's a ton of pelleted diets and commercially available diets that are great for I'm really fond of mixing the rep cow with the zoo Med pelleted diets basically this stuff is really brightly colored and it's bred it's a flavored and also smells a lot like Froot Loops whereas the zoo Med stuff is um when you look at the ingredients it honestly is a lot better however much like oatmeal versus Froot Loops oatmeal is better for you fruit does taste better and they smell way better so I usually mix a little bit of this with this just because it makes the zoo Med stuff a lot more appetizing alright so this is basically the colored food that you can keep on hand is kind of a base of way to add variety because if you look at the ingredients list on these this entire huge block of text is the ingredients in the zoo Med pelleted food uh that gigantic block of text is probably about 20 to 30 different things that you're not going to be able to add deer guantes diet on your own whereas rep cal has almost as big of an ingredient list so both of them have a ton of things in there that are going to be hard for you to give your iguana on your own so this is a nice easy way to provide your animals with basically just a little bit of extra variety a little bit more micronutrients things like that which are vital to kind of raising a healthy happy animal on top of that you can always mix in things like the canned fruit the mango um this is what I use the mango for a lot of my animals things like you know my my crested gecko stuff like that so basically any leftover fruits that I have for mixing with my fruit eating animals I can give to the iguana and then zoomit also makes a really fantastic candy Guana food that they love we've got iguanas here at the store that come running like they will jump from across the cage to come eat some of the canned food so it's again a good way to add variety and also great as emergency food I mean I know right now it's winter in most of the u.s. in all of the u.s. actually it's winter and in a lot of places it's snowing it's cold it's going to be kind of hard to get really good fresh produce so canned iguana food if you run out and you just can't make it out to the store this is the best way to do it there's also stuff like Zilla has freeze-dried vegetables which again has a ton of different this has a good few different veggies and stuff in it as well as the nature's own iguana bites and again it's just basically variety you want to give them as much different kinds of foods as possible variety is going to always be key if it's green and it has leaves at the store it's probably okay to give to your Guana the key is going to be moderation you don't want to feed them nothing but one thing I know a lot of folks on the internet or a lot of care sheets and stuff on the internet will say spinach is bad maybe not too much kale you got to worry about exactly how much carrots you give them or maybe tomatoes or I don't know it's it's basically just what they're looking at is the way that the balance of the nutrients within the the plant has a certain high level of things called oxalate which binds to calcium within the animals got within their kidneys and however the level of oxalates in any of those foods is a fraction of a percent of those foods so the whole point of that is basically as long as you don't feed your iguana nothing but spinach the amount of oxalates in that spinach doesn't matter you would have a problem as a person if you ate nothing but spinach as your vegetables the same kind of logic and the same kind of thing applies to your iguana your bearded dragon your tortoise the big thing is just don't overdo any one thing if you're feeding spinach with every single meal and your main green is going to be spinach you your iguana any animal would have a problem so basically just make sure that variety is kept up variety is the spice of life and varieties how you make sure that you don't overdo any one thing there is no problem with any one particular vegetable as long as you switch it up here at the store we go to the our local supermarket we spend because we have a bunch of animals we spend about twenty to twenty-five bucks on greens and we get one of everything in the produce department which the cashiers aren't as big a fan of as we are because takes forever to ring up but basically it's the easy way to make sure that you feed your animals a varied diet we just basically get one of everything and that's how all of our animals here at the store eat really well so you've got all that stuff for them to eat you've got your light the other thing you're going to want to do is make sure you check your temperature again like I was saying earlier these guys want a basking spot of 100 to 120 130 degrees but you not want to make sure that your cold side of the cage stays below 80 you're going to need a thermometer for that this is the zoom a digital thermometer I like it cuz it's stick on it's got a little probe and it'll basically go back and forth you can move it within the cage if you need to just leave it in there to get an idea of the ambient temperatures and me personally because again you're gonna have a big cage for these they're going to get quite large you want to check surface temperatures stuff like this uh this infrared thermometer it's this temp gun basically it's going to tell you surface temperatures it's how you're going to check all the basking zones the cool side make sure that basically everything is working the way it's supposed to and so these are pretty much a fantastic tool if you have more than one animal even if you just have one animal this is going to be the easiest way Plateau easiest way to monitor temperatures so we've got the iron prototype gun for checking temperatures all the foods and stuff when it comes to caging when it comes to decor we'll show you a bunch of the different decor items and things like that that we've got around here that you can use basically iguanas are going to be big animals you're gonna need big items so while a lot of this stuff will work for now just keep in mind you're probably going to be spending up where between 30 and 50 bucks apiece on large pieces of wood that you can use for your big five to six foot adult iguanas just kind of keep that in the back your mind that a baby iguana a little one like this a couple hundred bucks to set up a mature six foot adult easily five to six hundred seven hundred a thousand dollars or more because you're going to be building a large enclosure probably put it outside if the weather's good basically are just going to need a huge cage and those never come cheap so kind of keep that in the back of your mind these are they're inexpensive as little babies but as I get older they're very big they're expensive to cage as adults and it's just plain going to be an advanced animal to keep so we'll go ahead and check out some of the decor items you can always add lots of foliage um I've got a red iguana oh you like that no so you can always have lots of decor lots of foliage they'll hide in it so it'll help them feel safe and secure within the cage to have lots of leaves and things to hide in um you're gonna want a nice big water bowl something like this which is the zoo Med extra-large corner bowl this is going to be perfect for iguana this size as they get bigger they're going to need a bigger bowl we do carry a jumbo size bowl called a constrictor bowl that would work for mature adult iguana it's a really big bowl it's so big we actually don't have room for it on the Shelf so I told you just how big it is that would be perfect for an adult um humidity wise these guys do need humans they are from the tropics they are from South America very very humid place I'm so sprayed on the cage add water to the water boy is going to change that every day and you can also do things like add in a waterfall you can add in a fog or a misting system again they require high humidity if they don't have high enough humidity they have problems shedding and this guy is actually an exam when he was younger he was having trouble shedding and he's actually lost some of the spikes here in the middle of his back because the skin got caught around each of his spikes and ended up cutting off the blood flow and it fell off that'll happen to their toes to the tip of their tail um - a lot - pretty much any of their extremities so you're going to want to make sure that humidity stays high within their cage that they can shed properly and mature into big beautiful adult animals that you're proud to own and then it comes to all this big decor we have stuff like the specific grape wood which is extremely inexpensive for just how big of pieces you can get this is the medium-sized group wood as well as the large widths anywhere from 13 to $30 depending on just how big of a piece you get but these are basically good things to kind of branch across the cage you can do things like the sandblasted pieces and then my favorite which is always going to be the large cork Plex which you can use right underneath the basking spot I prefer cork as the basking area just because wood is going to be warmed but it's not going to get so hot that it will ever burn your animals you can have a hundred and twenty to be basking area and that'll be perfect this isn't going to ever burn your feet or cause any burns or anything which can be a concern if you have rock or any kind of hard surfaces left if there's going to be stuff like the cypress mulch and orchid bark that you can use a substrate basically these guys are kind of funny and that they definitely have a routine they have a way that they like to do things so if you establish your routine with your iguana if you always take it out in the morning to give it a bath and soak it and let it kind of take a drink and then poop and then get all that out of the way your cage will probably stay pretty close to spotless most of the time unless it gets mad at you in which case they are kind of known to smear poop and just kind of have a fit I have a couple of friends with large iguanas and every so often they have a bad day and they are definitely those animals that have a heck of a personality and so when they're mad at you they're mad they will make a mess they'll destroy the cage you'll know if you've messed up but aside from that you can just pretty much set them up in a nice beautiful cage put in your foliage put the bark in and you're only going to really need to clean out most of it every three to four months at most if you are taking the iguana out and soaking it every morning to make sure that it poops and drinks and basically is beautiful um the biggest advice I can give you is to establish a routine once your iguana gets used to the way you do things to the routine of your life how basically how its life is supposed to go they're happy little animals they don't mind handling interaction they actually like it they don't mind it at all it's just that you have to establish your routines that they know what to expect once you do that you'll find that your life is a heck of a lot easier a lot of people have big mean crazy iguanas pretty much what they need is just to learn that there's a routine that there's something going on kind of just establish a relationship with the iguana these are extremely smart lizards that get very large a bite from them is no joke you know whipping is no joke their claws are gnarly so pretty much you want to raise up an animal that you can work with that's enjoyable for you and the animal to interact with each other so basically establish your routine get them used to something set your cage up real nice and then just make sure that if you get a baby you're planning for later on that five to six foot adult it's going to require a big enclosure custom enclosure things like that um then very last thing it's going to be repped areum's which are going to be the easiest way to kind of give them some outdoor sunlight especially while they're smaller like this so this is the sixty-five gallon of terraeum it is sixteen and a half inches by 30 inches by 28 inches it's the absolute smallest that I recommend for starting your baby iguana often if you're going to without doors um if you're in a pinch and if you're in a bind you can also use this as a cage but it is going to be kind of difficult to maintain heat and humidity in one of these fully mesh cages but the nice thing is that you can put it outside you can hose it down it is a really easy way to kind of move them around the cages themselves are actually really inexpensive so it's a great option if you're pretty much just looking for your starter cage especially in the summer because you'll be keeping your Guana outdoors or kind of moving it around building your custom enclosure for when it gets larger these are awesome this is that one of these is actually what I use for my guy I keep him outdoors so when the weather's good anyway he's going to go outdoors in the hundred and seventy five gallon of terraeum that we carry where he's going to get lots of natural sunlight which makes it really fantastic for him and easy and if you have the Rotarians you can also use things like these magnetic ledges to kind of provide basking areas and place them to hide and sleep magnetic ledges are also easy to move they're not permanent so again it's another easy way to kinda you can adapt it from when you move them to the bigger cage and it basically makes life a heck of a lot easier okay so that's it and make sure that you sign up for the reptile time so you can hear all about this kind of stuff we've got great articles all about the latest and greatest in reptile husbandry amphibian husbandry and vertebrate husbandry where we discuss all the kinds of tools and products and things that you're going to need to properly care for your animals it's a completely free online magazine so make sure that you sign up it's again it's totally free to send it to your email inbox on the first of every month and we have a contest where you get prizes in there as well so who do you have to lose the sign up for that is going to be WWE reptile times comm and then if you want to order everything you saw on this video if you want to ask us more questions if you want to see what kind of animals or supplies or feeders we haven't stopped you can always visit our website at wwlp.com where we have pretty much everything you just saw in this video including iguanas and a lot of times we often have red iguanas in stock as well all its going to be available on our website so there you have it that was our informational video for this week we'll see you back here next Sunday

Channel: LLLReptile

Views: 395,960

Keywords: lllreptile, lll reptile, jen lllreptile, lllreptiles, iguana, green iguana, red iguana, about iguanas, iguana info, iguana care info, iguana husbandry, iguana iguana, tame iguana, how to set up iguana

Id: QeKeIcPb8Qg

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 28 2013