Why build such a big cage for iguana when you could just section off a room and let it roam around? Or, even better, why not just let it roam around your whole house?
Iguanas make complicated pets primarily because of their size and the conditions that must be provided in their habitats. The enclosure must have dimensions of at least 9x6x3 feet (length x height x depth), which is a bare minimum for an adult iguana, and there are no such cages on sale. Also, aquariums, dog crates (which do not retain moisture and temperature) are eliminated. It is clear that the cage for the iguana must be custom-made, which makes the whole thing more expensive. Most owners just fail this test and provide unsuitable enclosures, which leads to unfortunate, suffering animals.
At first glance, free roaming iguana seems like a pretty good idea to solve the habitat issue. Just sectioning off room is a lot more cost-effective than building that giant cage and it takes a lot less time. However, there are many drawbacks and, at the end, you’ll see that this might not be the best option.
First, if a lot of people use the room that your iguana lives in, sectioning off the entire room is probably not going to be easy. If your lizard is pretty small and there are a lot of nooks and crannies in your house, that you can get into, you would have to do a lot of iguana proofing or searching for him when he gets lost.
Do you have a dog (or another, possibly hostile pet)? Dogs like to eat small animals and your iguana will probably never be on good terms with your dog.
Still want to allow your iguana to free roam around your house? Ok, the first thing you have to do to iguana proof the area is to pick one room for its future habitat. A small bathroom won’t be that great for your iguana, you should pick a room which is pretty big and doesn’t have a lot of traffic through it. A good room would be one with a little bit of furniture (but not too much of it), a nice and high ceiling and a lot of open floor space. The next thing you have to do is to make a station for heat, UVB, food and water.
If you’re using a medium sized room, you can either choose to set it up as if it were a normal cage or you can just let your iguana explore whatever you’ve left in the room. Remove carpets, since you’ll have a lot of skin and poop to clean.
You’ll also have to worry about their humidity and their UVB intake, so keep that in mind before you go and decide to tear out your room just to make it into an iguana closure that doesn’t work. I haven’t heard of many cases where iguanas have ever free roamed an entire house just because they’re constant requirements in humidity which means you’d basically have to have a humidifier in every single room of your house which is pretty inconvenient.
Make sure that there are no dangers in the room (another reason why an iguana proofing the entire house seems pretty challenging). Move around the furniture and put something under couches to make sure your iguana doesn’t get under them. Once they get older, bigger and slower they’re not really going to be getting lost very often, because they will constantly be getting stuck if they charge so it won’t be that big of a deal. But, while they’re small I suggest keep into a cage.