Tank cleaning and sterilization

[bwoodfield]

I've been reading the forum for the last couple of weeks on and off and I've gotten some really good ideas and some of my questions answered, but I have that is going to be important for me very shortly.

We got a leopard gecko just after Christmas and by the recommendation of the guy at the pet shop have put fine sand in the tank. I've read on a couple other blog sites regarding leo's and that the sand needs to be dumped and replaced every 3-4 months. As well when the sand is dumped you need to clean and sterilize the tank, food bowl, water bowl, hides, etc. After reading many of the posts regarding sand, having it get in the water and food bowl, and outside of the tank, I've decided to go with a different substrate. (I'm not going to get into the discussion regarding substrates because I've read enough of them on here over the last couple weeks.)

I've narrowed my choice down to 2 different possibilities; either slate tiles or the baked clay/sand mixture. The biggest question for me is cleaning of the clay/sand substrate. I found mention of spot cleaning it, but do you also need to replace the entire mixture like straight sand every 3-4 months?

I've attached some pictures of Buffy that I just took.

 

[bwoodfield]

I also thought about one other question that I and my wife have had a few times. Right now Buffy is in a 10g tank, with a UTH on 1/3rd and a heat lamp. The UTH is actually turned off right now because the room that the tank is in, is kept at about 75F so the heat lamp keeps the warm side at about 90F (sand temp). The rest of the house is usually kept around 68F. Now the problem that we were having before was with just the UTH, or just the heat lamp, the tank wan't warm enough. With both the UTH and heat lamp it was getting up to 100F(sand temp).

I would like to be able to put the tank in the living room, and not hidden away. What would you recommend for maintaining the temperature in the tank?

 

[azkfxgecko]

what temp was 100? ambient? floor temp? they need belly heat, weather or not ur light can heat up the ground to the proper temp its possible but needs to be checked, i plugged my UTH's into a reptistat so i can control the temp up or down, now after its on for a while i check the floor temps to make sure its not to hot or cold when i switch to slate i am cautious with heating as its a really good conduct of heat so an UTH and light may be WAY to much, just not sure yet

 

[bwoodfield]

I have an aquarium thermometer laying in the sand directly under the heat lamp and above the UTH, that's where it was reading 100 F.