Hey everyone, I just have been thinking about this for the past few weeks, and now I am to the point where I really want to try it. The way my Uro's tank is setup, his food dish has always been in the far back left hand corner on the cool side. However, due to my hours (My day job is police work) I am not really home enough during his active cycle to make sure his greens are fresh and not dried out due to the tank enviroment. I have been trying to devise a way to keep an entire head of bok choy in the tank at all times, in water so that the little guy constantly has fresh, hydrated leaves to eat. Also, I feel like if he were eating them in the configuration I'm dreaming up, it would be more natural than from a food dish. I was thinking about building a sort of plexiglass chimney. A rectangular tube, if you will, that extends from the ground to the screen top. It will be painted brown like a tree. About 6-7" up the tube, there will be a 1x1" hole cut in the side of the tube. The Bok Choy stem will go in this hole, allowing the root, if you will, of the vegetable, to rest in the 3-4" of water in the bottom of the tube. The leaves will hang down the sides of the tube as if growing out of the ground or hanging from a low tree. The chimney also will provide an escape for the humidity into the less humid air above the tank instead of into the vivarium. I have ZERO experience with plants in general, all I know is that if you put a flower in water, it stays alive longer, so I'm assuming the same is true for a vegetable? If the head of Bok Choy would stay green for say, 3-4 days in that configuration, I would be in the same state that I am now, as the heads seem to go bad in 3-5 days in the fridge. Also, I like the idea of the plant having access to water, so that whenever Fin feels hingry, hes getting leaves from a plant that is hydrated, not dried out because I'm at work when he is hungry. Does anyone know if Bok Choy or other vegetables will stay alive with their roots set in water? Will a Uro be more inclined to eat since the greens will be fresher? And in their semi-normal configuration as in the wild? Thanks in advance, Hope to become a part of the community here, this site has been invaluable to me in the past even though I was previously just a troll =D
Even with the chimney above, I would still be worried about the increase humidity in the enclosure, but I have no idea what you enclosure looks like or constructed. I would say go for it and maybe use a humidity reader just to check to make sure that the humidity doesnt go too high. I was wondering about this the other day. Luckily, both my husband and myself work from home, so we can feed them midday. But what about people who work? I can't imagine how the food would stay good enough from the morning, until they wake up and are warm enough to eat.
