Best UVB for tegu

[JoshSloane]

Hey all,

I used to keep tegus, and am now deciding to get back to it. I used to use mercury vapor bulbs for their dual heat and uvb abilities. What are your thoughts on this? What is considered the gold standard these days for UVB and heat for a hatchling?

[John1982]

It was powersun vs megaray when I last needed UVB indoors. I'd start my search with those two brands and see what's been going on in recent years.

[jclaiborne]

What I am find works for me, at least now, (John had me pointed towards powersuns when we though mine lil looked like she may have been developing MBD which she looks to have recovered from) is that I use a bank of 3 low wattage flood bulbs (as seen in my cage post) for heat and for the UVB I have been getting good results for all my lizards with using a hydroponics (SunBlaster) T5HO fixture and then using ZooMed HO bulbs in the 10.0 range. The UV output seems to drop drastically at the 6 month marks so I replace all of them at that time, I have been measuring with a cheap light meter, but plan on upgrading to a nicer one soon so I can actually track my readings and know they are accurate. When using the HO bulbs I can keep the fixtures at a 2ft distance and still get enough UV at the substrate level. In the plant world they have just come out with a UV HO bulb, but there aren't really any specs on it yet. The local hydro shop told me that when they got them in, they would give me one to mess around with and test out (in an empty cage, don't want to test it with my animals until I know if the output is correct).