It's finally that time! The young tegu I was keeping in a 70gal rep tank since I bought him has officially outgrown his enclosure, in just a few short months. His new home is going to be in a room we have in our finished basement. It's 7' by 10+' and instead of building an entire enclosure, I was planning on just converting the entire room into a living space for him.

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Unfortunately for the moment...

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The room is being used by a roommate for storage. My next project will be focused on cleaning it out so I can begin preparing it for Terezi.

I was honestly thinking about just making a giant sandbox-type thing in the room. There's no need to have the area completely enclosed, just a pit enough for me to pile his substrate in without it falling out of the room when I open the door. I'm starting to get ideas, but I'm not very handy so I'd like to know if anyone has any really reliable tutorials or good suggestions for how to best keep a tegu in a room. I assume there's things I'll have to do to the walls and floor to prevent damage from the humidity and stuff.

The room does have some cool details, like I figure I could mount his basking lamp on this incline of the wall.

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Anyway, I'd love to hear any suggestions. Is this a solid idea, or should I go ahead and just build an enclosure to fit the room? Pros/cons? I'd like to give my baby as much room to dig and explore as possible, so if I could use the full room that'd be ideal.