While I am not considering getting another reptile in the near future (a leopard gecko and ball python are enough right now), when I do get another animal I want something that will give me a bit more of a challenge but which is still relatively reasonable: in other words an "intermediate" species. While I think that my next reptile will probably be another snake, I am also considering another lizard as well and the two main options I see are either a blue-tongued skink or a bearded dragon. While blue-tongued skinks are often referred to as "intermediate lizards" and bearded dragons are often referred to as "beginner lizards," after doing some research it seems to me like blue-tongued skinks are actually quite a bit easier to care for than bearded dragons. It appears as if bearded dragons need a quite a bit more space than blue-tongued skink, with the former needing at least a 75 gallon enclosure while the latter is apparently fine in a 40-55 gallon enclosure. Another reason for me is bearded dragons apparently eat tons and tons insects, whereas blue-tongued skinks eat almost entirely greens/plants. While feeding my leopard gecko mealworms & crickets is no problem, those are in reasonable quantities, whereas I have heard the bearded dragons can eat up to 100 insects per day or something crazy like that and that you have to be changing your bearded dragon's specific diet as they grow. Yet another thing that I heard is that while all lizards need UVB light, bearded dragons themselves need an incredibly specific frequency of UVB and that it needs to specifically be one of the horizontal tube bulbs instead of just a lamp. Even if blue-tongued skinks are much rarer in pet stores and are far more expensive to buy than your average bearded dragon, I rather pay a ton for an animal upfront and have its care be cheaper over its lifetime than an animal that's cheap upfront but then costs a fortune to care for. Now I do understand that not all blue-tongued skinks are created equal and that there are many different species/subspecies/local varities with some being small, some being larger, some being tropical and humidity-loving, others being dry, etc. I am probably thinking about a drier-environment species like the northern blue-tongued skink. I could easily be wrong here about all of this and I wanted to get some opinions on which is a better choice for a beginner-intermediate keeper.
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