# Expanding foam and painted mortar background



## Shenanigaens (Dec 10, 2020)

I start building Chateau le Gu today and I want to do a lot of foam and mortar stuff. Has anyone tried it with their Tegu’s, and if so, how did it hold up? I think if I went thicker painting it on, maybe more of a spackling technique, it should hold up. 

The idea is to use spray foam on a base structure, carve it into the desired design (usually rock), then paint it with a thinned out grout or concrete slurry. 

It works GREAT with smaller herps and will last near indefinitely, but Tegu’s are quite a bit heftier than geckos and more destructive than iguanas. I have this horrible image of spending a week on a wall only to come home and find the boys punched through the grout and made a nest in the foam.


----------



## Josh (Dec 14, 2020)

if you give your tegu a proper hide and stuff this will work fine. I think if you just tossed him in there without a place to feel secure then he might start clawing at things.


----------



## ToadHallBetty (Mar 16, 2021)

The bigger the lizard, the thicker the grout should be. Look for "making a rock out of a cardboard box" on YouTube. It's a great demonstration of a similar technique being used for big monitor lizards.


----------

