What you need
- Windows 10 or 11 with Stream Deck software 7.1 or newer.
- Any Stream Deck: there are pages for the Stream Deck, Mini, XL, +, Neo and Mobile.
- Nothing else: no account, and it never goes online. Your vivarium is saved on your PC.
1. Getting started
In testing. Reptiles is being played on real decks before it goes to the Elgato Marketplace. This page will link to the listing when it is up. It is the third Deck Pets habitat, after Fish Tank and Rodents.
- Find Deck Pets in the Stream Deck actions list and drag the Vivarium key onto any page.
- Press it. A new vivarium offers a line-up of starters: leopard geckos, crested geckos and corn snakes. Pick one.
- The whole deck becomes the vivarium: the warm end under the heat lamp on the left, the cool end with the water dish on the right, and your controls along the bottom.
2. Looking after them
- Feed puts in what each hungry animal eats: live crickets that wander the floor until they are caught, greens or fruit mix in a dish, or a thawed mouse for a snake. Reptiles eat every few days, not every day, and a snake lies still for a day or so to digest.
- Water fills the water dish.
- Mist sprays the vivarium for the species that like humid air. It only ever mists up to what your animals like, and it says so when a desert vivarium needs none. An automatic fogger from the shop does it for you.
- Clean works an area at a time: press Clean, then the keys with mess on.
- Lamp shows the warm and cool temperatures and the UVB tube, and a press does whatever it needs.
- Press the vivarium itself to handle the animal nearest to where you pressed, or to pick up a shed skin.
3. Heat and light
- The heat lamp warms the warm end on a timer that follows your computer's clock. Too small a lamp for the vivarium and the warm end never gets warm enough; too big and even the cool end is hot. A cold animal will not eat. A thermostat keeps things right with a big lamp.
- The UVB tube fades over about a week of daylight. Bearded dragons and tortoises need it for their bones; the others are happier with it. The Lamp key shows when a new tube is due, and a press fits one.
- Blown bulbs is a setting, off unless you switch it on: then a bulb blows now and then and the Lamp key tells you. A new bulb is free if you have no scales for one.
4. Water, mist and shedding
- Crested geckos and ball pythons want humid air; leopard geckos and bearded dragons want it dry. The air dries out over hours, faster under a lit lamp; soil and live plants hold it longer.
- Every so often an animal goes dull, then sheds. In humid enough air (or with a humid hide) the skin comes off in one piece and lies on the floor, worth a few scales to pick up. In dry air it gets stuck until you mist it.
5. Handling
Press the vivarium to pick up the nearest animal: that is how they tame, bearded dragons fastest and ball pythons slowest. Leave them be when they are resting out of their hours, in shed, or sleeping off a meal: a snake handled just after eating may bring it back up.
6. Eggs and the incubator
- A grown, content pair of one species, in a vivarium with only one male, has a clutch: the female is gravid for a while, then lays in the substrate.
- Eggs left there rarely hatch. The incubator takes them, and has a page of its own: each egg with its countdown, and a heat key.
- For leopard geckos and bearded dragons, as in real life, the incubator's heat decides the sex: cool for females, warm for males, the middle for a mix.
- Hatchlings are small, eat often, and grow up over a few days.
7. The animals
| Animal | Level | Up by | Air | Eats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leopard gecko | 1 | night | dry | insects |
| Crested gecko | 2 | night | humid | fruit mix |
| Corn snake | 3 | night | temperate | a mouse a week |
| Bearded dragon | 4 | day | dry, hot basking, UVB | insects and greens |
| Ball python | 5 | night | humid | a mouse every week and a half |
| Hermann's tortoise | 6 | day | temperate, UVB | greens |
Species never share a vivarium, and it is one male per vivarium. A second vivarium from the shop keeps a second species, and both share one wallet.
8. Morphs and one-offs
Every animal is a morph, from Common to Legendary, the way keepers talk about them: Mack Snow and Tangerine leopard geckos, Banana and Piebald ball pythons. The rarer it is, the more scales it brings in. Above them all are six named one-offs, one for each species, which are never sold and only hatch from two Rare-or-better parents.
9. Settings
- Simulation or Casual: in Casual, nobody dies.
- Illness and Blown bulbs, both off unless you want them.
- Scales and XP multipliers, up to ten times.
- Active hours: swap day and night, so your geckos and snakes are up while you are at your desk.
- Day hours, across decks, smoothness, How to play, your record and Start over.
Frequently asked
My geckos are always hiding.
Most of these animals are up at night. Set Active hours to Swapped and they will be up while you are.
Will my animals die while I am away?
No. Time away runs at half speed for up to three days and cannot kill anything.
Something is still wrong.
Email support@teatimeservers.ca and tell us what you see.