Terrarium design and humidity

Currently I have 1.3 coleonyx v.b. in a front opening tank with the floor space of a 20 gallon long. There are 2 issues I'm trying to deal with:

1. Substrate: I'm reluctant to put them entirely on sand or other particulate because of fear of impaction and also not wanting to have to dig up the whole cage every time someone lays eggs. At the moment I have ceramic tile on the bottom of the cage, several hides on top of the tiles and four shallow dishes: 2 tupperware containers filled with eco earth, one ceramic dish with more eco earth and another ceramic dish with rounded stones, too large for them to ingest. They seem to hang out in all the spaces, but I'm wondering what other people do.

2. Humidity: My tank is the bottom of 2 stacking tanks. The tanks are velcroed together and each one has a UTH. The bottom tank feels pretty warm, although never above 92, but the humidity is high. I'm generally not comfortable keeping desert animals in such high humidity (I'm a not a banded gecko gecko breeder) because of fear of respiratory problems, but they do seem to be thriving. Any thoughts?

Aliza

Impaction...a touchy subject at best. I've heard a lot about it, but personally never seen it nor heard first hand about sand impaction in desert animals. All my desert geckos (including quite a few non-coleonyx species) are on sand, and have been for several years. Also, I've found most of the time I'll find my eggs inside the humid hide. I use a product from Lee's, called a Shedding Stump http://www.strictlypetsupplies.com/_010838201609-Lee-Shedding-Stump-W-ladder


Humidity is a big issue here as well. In the summer my herp room will often have an ambient humidity of +80%.
I'm forced to run the AC enough to drop the humidity, then of course the room is too cold. What I ended up with is using halogen lamps for heat on each cage, then adding small PC fans to cool it down under 100F. My electric company loves me .

I have my 1.1 C.v.v.'s in a ten gallon tank with paper towel substrate. There are a couple of fake plants, an upside down deli cup with a hole cut in the side with moist paper towel in the bottom, a cave, a shallow step-up water dish, and a dish of calcium/vitamins inside. The cave is over the warm side of the tank. I'm thinking about taking out a plant and putting in another hide on the cool side of the tank. Now that I think more about it, do they even need the calcium dish? If not, maybe I could put another something for them to hide under in the space that that dish would leave...

I always provide a small bowl (I use a bottle cap) of ground cuttlebone for calcium when housing ground geckos. If you remove yours, just be sure to gut load and supplement your feeders.

I'd also really recommend you give them a hide on the cool side, just in case.

After a lot of questions, thoughts and discussion on other forums, I finally made some decisions about how to house my 1.3 colony and moved them into their new home. They are once again in a front opening "half -29" (same length and width as a 29 gallon but half the height). I have heat cable running the length of the enclosure about halfway along the width, so the heat gradient is from back to front. The basic substrate is ceramic tile. On top of that I have the following: Two gladware containers with eco earth that I keep moist, one functioning as a lay box and the other, unfortunately, functioning as a bathroom; one ceramic dish about 1 1/2" deep running back to front with a mixture of desert sand and ecoearth, covered on top with a quarry tile and a few pieces of slate; two little ceramic huts functioning as hides; one piece of cholla wood about 6" long, hollow on the inside; one small fake rock planter with room for 2 small plant pots which now have jade and haworthia; water dish; small round ceramic dish for mealworms. It sounds pretty crowded but doesn't look that way. They are mostly hanging out under the quarry tile, in the hides and in the gladware but do seem to be utilizing the whole tank. Although people have talked about how much these guys like to burrow, they seem to be more interested in hanging out in crevices than burrowing. They are less mobile now because I'm cooling them. I also have some plexiglass over the top of the screen to raise the humidity. Although they are desert creatures, I have wrestled with the amount of humidity and was finally convinced that they may spend a lot of their time in the wild underground in humid microclimates.

Aliza