I'm glad you got the russian. I'd be thrilled building a pen! Well not completely by myself of course. With help, for sure. Its been a while since I set up the one for my russian. However, pretty soon I'm going to have to relocate her indoors on a more permanent basis (with a few outdoor privileges of course). Something happened which has made me, and the rest of the neighbors, scared of leaving out pets outside. And my russian isn't exactly one to run the face of threat or danger. So upon building it indoors, I'm going to have to set up a whole new enclosure inside. To my knowledge since he wont be much outdoors (unsupervised) he's going to need uvb lighting. I was deciding on the types of lights I could get and I came down to either mercury vapors or zilla's desert series bulbs. I think that the mvb's might be too hot. And I got the other choice because my beardies are on those new zillas and they've been doing great for a while. So when I saw that on the box for the bulbs it said "ideal for red-footed tortoises" I thought it was ok to use on my russian. After all, I did research and I've seen people using 10.0 bulbs on a russian, which is the equivalent of the desert 50s. what do you guys think?
hiya. cool another russian owner! i use the reptisun 10.0 bulb and a 100 watt regular light bulb (for basking) whenever katya is indoors. i put her outside on all days when the temp is 70 or above and not when it rains. i've also learned about not keeping turtles outside overnight. i've had my 2 easterns stolen from their outdoor pens. now everyone comes in at night and i check on them often. nothing beats natural sunlight though. i'm not a fan of hot weather but i am going to miss it for my turtles sakes.
