Hey, you seem like a pretty experienced reptile keeper and I was wondering if you could tell me if it would be safe to house 3 Chinese water dragons with a pair of gold Tegus in a large paludarium. I'm custom building the paludarium with a 400 gallon aquarium built into it, it will be an L shaped enclosure with the long side measuring ~ 9' long x 3' wide and the short side being ~ 4'6" long and 3' wide, the whole enclosure will be 7' tall with lots of branches and foliage. The aquarium will be 2 feet off of the ground and ~16" off the substrate to provide an extra cool area and it will have 2 feet above it for the water dragons to bask on branches placed over the tank which will include turtles in it, the tank will be 5' long.
My reptiles
- Thread starter Amelie
- Start date
Please don’t attempt to mix these reptiles. I’m not sure what types of turtles your thinking of adding but if a lizard gets in the water you can say goodbye to toes or possibly even feet and chucks of tail are bound to go missing if they fall in or come close to touching the water. I’m also going to strongly advise against mixing your water dragons and tegu one will be injured for sure maybe not right away, but give it some time and something bad is bound to happen your water dragons will end up injured or dead. If you decide not to listen I’d only go with 1 tegu and considering iguanas instead of water dragons they will grow larger and have better means of defending themselves if needed.
If you must have a mixed species tank there are lists of animals that won’t or better yet shouldn’t harm each other you can find these lists online and even then your taking somewhat of a risk but the chances of something going bad are a lot less likely then what you are currently proposing. For instance you could probably get away with smaller less aggressive turtles like musk or mud turtles with a variety of arboreal lizards like green and brown anoles, long tailed grass lizards and some species of gecko or tree frog living together aswell I’ve even heard rough green snakes do well with a mixture of small lizards and even frogs, but again please do your research and know it’s always a gamble I’ve never tried this myself. Other animals you might wanna look into are Iguanas/Redfoot tortoises(I’d love to say Argentine tegus are in this group aswell for myself but I’m afraid not.) also arboreal snakes like boas or pythons with mainly aquatic animals (like turtles) I’ve seen on these lists.
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