My largest Leopard tortoise is 19months old, 6" scl and 1.5lbs. He recently graduated out of the 17'x 8' Leopard pen and now spends everyday with free roam of my tortoise safe backyard. I still bring him inside at night to sleep in a humid chamber. He has been raised in a closed chamber with high humidity since the day I brought him home. He was about a month old.
Most of us don't know when to stop the high humidity. So, my plan is to keep him in a humid environment each night until he is 10". At that size I'll reevaluate. I have a 4'x 2' heated tortoise house outside (a mini copy of Tom's tort house) that he can use on cooler days but I want to prevent pyramiding for as long as possible.
Because this is only used for sleeping, I use a 10 gallon aquarium. It's what I had on hand but will probably do a 20 gallon soon so I can add a water dish. There is no basking light, no UV, just a CHE on a thermostat set to 82F. I have 3" of top soil for substrate and a plant in the corner that he likes to nestle under.
My humidity stays in the high 90's. In the picture you can see it is 81F 99% humidity. He is stretched out snoozing after a nice SoCal day
I used some hardware cloth to hold up the dome. Aluminum foil to cover the top and completely taped it. I've been using this for 2 or 3 months now and it works wonderfully.
Not sure if this will help anyone but if it does, great.
Most of us don't know when to stop the high humidity. So, my plan is to keep him in a humid environment each night until he is 10". At that size I'll reevaluate. I have a 4'x 2' heated tortoise house outside (a mini copy of Tom's tort house) that he can use on cooler days but I want to prevent pyramiding for as long as possible.
Because this is only used for sleeping, I use a 10 gallon aquarium. It's what I had on hand but will probably do a 20 gallon soon so I can add a water dish. There is no basking light, no UV, just a CHE on a thermostat set to 82F. I have 3" of top soil for substrate and a plant in the corner that he likes to nestle under.
My humidity stays in the high 90's. In the picture you can see it is 81F 99% humidity. He is stretched out snoozing after a nice SoCal day
I used some hardware cloth to hold up the dome. Aluminum foil to cover the top and completely taped it. I've been using this for 2 or 3 months now and it works wonderfully.
Not sure if this will help anyone but if it does, great.
