Best Display Reptile?

My Asian Vine Snake makes a really nice display animal. Especially since they are diurnal, so people can actually see them moving around and doing their thing

Brazilian rainbow boa? they are so beautiful.

emerald tree boas r great

YouTube - Electric blue gecko feeding

Gotta love 'em.

I love our Panther Chameleon to bits.

They're just too cool.

A GTP would be cool but I love me some desert animals so I went with other and my other is bearded dragons. Their color morphs are pretty damn cool looking and I've never had my bearded dragon hide at all. Not even really blend in with his environment. He just likes to sit on the highest branch he possibly can and then kamikaze onto his food bowl.

I voted green tree python. I might get some eventually myself (won't be for a LONG time though). I have a friend that has them. Once past the baby stage he says they're a lot more bullet proof than say an Emerald Tree boa. But most definitely aren't snakes you want to handle. He can lift them out on the branch to clean and not get tagged but pretty much all of his will tag you if you mess with them. But to another person's point, he did have one a while back that was really tame. But that seems to be the exception. Also, I'm wondering why you list frilled dragons as a display animal? If you raise them from a hatchling, you can handle those. The same friend (he owns a pet store), had one that literally would eat crickets out of his hand! Those are amazing animals and I've long debated back and forth between one of those and a bearded dragon. If only I had more time for another animal that needs day to day care.

that was just an Idea. Ive only seen them once at a specialty reptile store. It was just a baby and it looked awsome and you really dont see a lot of them.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

A group of small, active, diurnal lizards would make the best display. Anoles, Lygodactylus geckos, Curly-tails, or other active lizards will hunt, court, put on social displays, and generally entertain absolutely anyone who would stop to watch them. When kept in groups with one male and several females, there's virtually always something going on in there to watch.

If you keep them in an area with low but regular traffic, they learn to get used to the passage of people, and will eventually stop freaking out and hiding when someone walks up.

Ball pythons are great pets--but the small lizards are tops for an interesting display. None of the other species you mentioned can compare in terms of sheer enjoyment from watching them.

I just got a trio of Lygodactylus williamsi, and I can watch them for an hour at a time. They're intelligent, curious, and they're always up to something.

Don't let the low prices of some small herps influence you, either. Green anoles (for example) are great fun to keep, and that's what it's really all about with a display. A gorgeous fully-planted vivarium with naturalistic landscaping and brightly-colored, active, engaging little animals is going to make a much more dramatic impression than the lump of green stillness that is a chondro, or the occasional twitch from a bored frilled dragon basking under a heat lamp.

When you're setting up a display to WATCH (rather than just look at in passing), think of species that actually move around and do things that will hold your interest. :)

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What cage are you using?
(sorry lots of questions :D )
where exactly do you get the little lizards?
are there any species you would recommend?
do you have to clean the cage at all?
Any info on the set up?

Yea you cant tell im interested:D

The best display cages for them are probably the ZooMed or ExoTerras. You can keep a pair in a 12 X 18--that's a minimum size. I would go one larger for a trio, for comfort. They won't get lost in there, no worry about that--they'll use every part of it.

Naturalistic is the best choice. Have fun with cork bark, live plants, and artificial rock structures. The Pangea elevated mushroom feeding platforms are virtually a necessity. They adore bamboo, but you can use PVC if you're interested in incubating eggs in a separate place. (PVC pieces can be caulked at the ends and put together with connectors, then simply switched out as one end has eggs deposited in it).
Bromeliads and pothos are both good plant choices.
They need UVB lighting. Temperatures are typical for tropical rainforest species--90F basking, 80F ambient. Temperature drop to room temp at night.
Humidity range from 60 to 80%. Drink from droplets, so mist once or twice a day.

You can go two route with cleaning--use a thin layer of inexpensive coco fiber or moss substrate (you need to keep humidity up), and change it frequently, OR...
Use a soil mix (no vermiculite or perlite in it), with some bioballs underneath, and make it fairly deep. Add some tropical springtails and woodlice (roly polies). Once a week, brush droppings from sticks and leaves, clean anything badly soiled, and wipe the glass down. The scavenger bugs will take care of the waste, and you may possibly not have to actually break down the cage for a complete cleaning more than once a year. This is less disruptive to the animals. If you see any sign of plants dying in this setup, break it down--some balance is off if the plants start to die when they were previously healthy.

I personally recommend Lygodactylus williamsi, because I have found them to have amazing personalities in comparison with most small lizards. They lose all their shyness within a couple of months if they're kept in an area of the house with some traffic. Green anoles and some other anole species also have a reputation for losing their shyness and getting to trust their keeper.

L. williamsi are more active than most anoles. They always seem to be busy doing something, and their interactions with each other can be amazing and hilarious. They're also complete chow-hounds, and they'll do anything for a snack (be careful not to overfeed them, they can get porky quickly).

L. williamsi do not like to set foot on the floor of the cage. They'll come down to within an inch or two of it, but they don't want to touch the ground, so put most of their decor higher up. Provide visual barriers, sometimes the subordinate animals need a place to be comfortable out of sight of the dominant animals. You may want 2 feeding platforms with some visual barrier between them.

They thrive on dusted flightless fruit flies and Repashy CGD. New imports may need to be coaxed to try CGD by mixing it with peach baby food first. Once they realize it's food, they'll have no problem. lol (Ours got a huge sugar buzz when we gave them the peach/CGD mix for the first time--after living off of insects alone for several weeks, they practically went into orbit after scarfing a bunch of it down--they were doing back flips to catch gnats).

Some also feed them roach nymphs, pinhead crickets, mini-mealworms, etc. I have found that williamsi will eat whatever you offer them, even if they don't care for it much. None of my Lygodactylus species like silkworms, but only the williamsi tried them, made faces, and then ate them anyhow. lol
I don't like to use crickets in naturalistic setups, because some of them always manage to escape, and then they hide until they're too large for the lizards to eat them. Those big escapee crickets would then pose a hazard to the lizards and their eggs.

"Electric Blue Geckos" are still being imported--for now. Their habitat is a valley pocket of rainforest in Tanzania, and it's being deforested. We have no idea how much longer they will be imported...in reality, it should never have happened in the first place. But since it's happening, it's a good idea for anyone buying imports to carefully establish them with an eye toward producing CBB babies. Not only may the flow of imports be shut off soon...we have to face the idea that they may have no home left in Africa once it's done.
That being said, I have seen imports recently as low as $25 for males. One male and 2 females is a good setup, but you can add more animals with really large cages.
They are insanely prolific. As soon as they feel their body condition is good enough, they'll begin courting and breeding. Females will lay eggs that adhere to surfaces--usually 2 at a time, like most small lizards, 2 or 3 weeks apart. This is why I dust all of their insects with calcium, it's important that they get plenty of calcium in their diet. The CGD has plenty of calcium too.

Hatchlings are delicate. Adults may eat them, so most remove them to a separate cage. Due to their size, it has to be pretty tight. I modified a ZooMed by affixing bits of plastic screen over every opening I could find.

Hatchlings grow fast, if they make it through the first 3 weeks. They quickly become robust and fairly hardy. They eat dusted flightless melanogaster fruit flies and CGD, and will also eat the springtails. I haven't found them to be especially difficult to care for, but mortality due to misadventure can be high--due to their minute size, I have lost one to mysterious disappearance, one to a door hinge (it was hiding in the crack and was killed when the door was opened), and a few simply hatched out a bit weak and never thrived. I had one escape during a transfer from incubator to cage--it showed up high on the wall the next day, and I was able to recapture it unharmed. It's been a loss of about 50%, over about 3 months time. Steel yourself for the fact that you can't raise every hatchling successfully, because they're the size of ants, fast, stubborn, and sneaky. They hatch out seemingly as unafraid of you as the acclimated adults--they get more wary after a couple of weeks.