Baby Sulcata Need Help Please

[Amber Matukonis]

Hi Everyone,

I hope someone can help me. I have tried to review some of the posts but I am hopelessly lost. I have a brand new baby Sulcata tortoise. It is almost a month old. It is very tiny and fits in the palm of my hand. We did not want to put it into a glass terrarium so my husband build it a nice large wooden "condo" in our front room. I live in Arizona. the baby will get indirect sunlight. We also have the basking light and the daylight one for it.

My problem...we don't know what to put down over the wooden bottom. I have read of lots of things from shower curtains to pond lining glued down. We also don't know what really to use for the bedding if you will. We bought Forrest Flooring from the pet store (it is cypress chips) but when we opened the bag and poured it into the enclosure...a VERY large cockroach came out and it was very alive. We quickly caught it and killed it. But we got rid of all of the cypress chips because we were worried about possible cockroach eggs. So now we are reluctant to get another bag of this stuff but don't know what to use. Plus it seemed he was too small for the large chips? It appears you can use play sand? and even wet it down a little? We really want to take good care of this little guy but we need some help and it seems all the websites say something different.

Please help us out.

Thank you,
Amber

 

[Maro2Bear]

Hi Amber, and welcome to the Tortoise Forum.

First, don't go looking all over the internet ( or books, petshops ) for other info. Go to the Sulcata section here and read everything.

Try to take a picture of your current set up and post that. A pix will help forum members help you. No sand for the substrate. Look under the sulcata section, there is a ton of info on heat, humidity, lighting, substrate, food, etc.

A large tupperware type container works well for young sullys, fully enclosed, with proper temperatures, light, a humid hide, etc.
Sunlight via the windows doesnt do much.

I'm sure @Tom will soon provide you with the links and additionsl info. Stop, take a deep breath, upload some pix of your trt and enclosure. Heat, humidity, lighting, substrate, soaking are all important sat this young stage of your torts long life.

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Amber, and welcome to the Forum!

Here are a couple links that you can trust:

http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/beginner-mistakes.45180/

http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/how-to-raise-a-healthy-sulcata-or-leopard-version-2-0.79895/

I don't blame you for being worried about finding cockroach eggs in your substrate. Yuck! I like to use orchid bark for substrate. I buy it at a local to California hardware store - Orchard's Supply Hardware. But because orchids are grown all over the world, I'm sure you can find it other places too. It comes in three sizes - not the size of the bag, but the size of the bark - and I always buy the small or fine.

You can spread it out on a cookie sheet and bake it to kill any eggs.

Once you add it to your tort table, pat it down firmly with your hand. this makes it easier for a baby to walk on.

 

[Amber Matukonis]

Thank you for the recommendations. I will look for the orchid bark. The Cypress bark was a really bad idea...not only was there that really big cockroach but we found super tiny little bugs crawling around the next day in the enclosure. So not a good experience. I included a couple pictures of our little guy. My son named him Michaelangelo. My son is 5 years old.

I will look over the links and read through the posts here in the forum. I am sure i will soak up some great information.

Thanks again!