It looks great! Does the heat come up and make the bed warm too?
Very cool idea!!It ended up taking a little longer to complete the box than I first expected. Here it is all assembled. I was considering heavy duty decking paint for the interior and staining the outside. Any suggestions for water proofing are definitely welcome.
View attachment 197264View attachment 197265View attachment 197266
Lovely!It ended up taking a little longer to complete the box than I first expected. Here it is all assembled. I was considering heavy duty decking paint for the interior and staining the outside. Any suggestions for water proofing are definitely welcome.
View attachment 197264View attachment 197265View attachment 197266
Hi all,
Never sure where to start with these introductions. Well, we adopted this little sulcata hatchling at a Reptile Convention here in Sacramento back on September 26, 2015; pretty much as an impulse buy (I know, strike 1). The girlfriend and I have been looking at dogs for years but could never agree on a breed or anything beyond 'we want a dog'. Needless to say, our wishy-washiness landed us on tortoise. Sticking with the dog theme we came up with the name Brendel as a play on the brindle dog coat color pattern.
Since then, we've really taken to caring for the little dude. I found, and have been lurking in, this forum shortly after setting up a habitat according to the guy we got him from. The info we first received wasn't entirely wrong, but we did get the "these are desert animals" routine.
We started out with the following instructions:
Substrate: Timothy Hay and Paper
Water Dish: none (gets all water from his food)
Soak: Twice a week for 10-20min
Lighting: Mercury Vapor Bulb
Humid Hide: none
After finding this forum we changed the setup quite a bit:
Substrate: Coconut Coir
Water Dish: 6" tupperware lid filled with water (1/4" deep)
Soak: Daily
Lighting: MVB and Ceramic Coil for nighttime heat.
Humid Hide: Currently a chik-fil-a to go container flipped over and covered with dirt and substrate.
Temps:
Under Lamp: 85-90
Cool side: 80
Night heat: 80-85
When it is warm enough Brendel gets to explore the back yard with constant supervision and grazes on clovers and other weeds. Now that it is cold and raining I setup an exercise pen (3'x4' dog kennel with heat lamp) so that he still gets a change of scenery.
Looking closely at the shell it is pretty obvious how the soakings have had a beneficial effect on his growth. It is hard to explain it, but his initial growth rings were having a pyramiding effect creating grooves between the carapace plates. After we changed over to daily soaks the shell growth has come in much thicker and smoother. There is an indentation or moat-like effect (reverse pyramiding) with the shell growth as it has corrected. I'll have to get a close-up of the shell when wet to show the moat-like groove around each carapace plate.
I want to thank you all for collective knowledge and enthusiasm for tortoise care. I aim to keep posting pics of ♬Little dude♬'s development (FYI, the music notes are there because we sing the phrase "little duuuuude" whenever we say it).
First Soak:
View attachment 155093
End of Week 1:
View attachment 155094
End of Week 2:
View attachment 155095
End of Week 3:
View attachment 155096
End of Week 4:
View attachment 155097
End of Week 5:
View attachment 155098
End of Week 6:
View attachment 155099View attachment 155100
End of Week 7:
View attachment 155101
Hi brendelwood!!! I too was given that line "their from the desert".... and all the wrong setup advice!We started out with the following instructions:
Substrate: Timothy Hay and Paper
Water Dish: none (gets all water from his food)
Soak: Twice a week for 10-20min
Lighting: Mercury Vapor Bulb
Humid Hide: none
....Looking closely at the shell it is pretty obvious how the soakings have had a beneficial effect on his growth. It is hard to explain it, but his initial growth rings were having a pyramiding effect creating grooves between the carapace plates....
Thank you! and I too will stick to a daily soak... I like to talk to him anyway.... so he gets me to bug him (as he rolls his eyes)... haha... and some nice poops going when I stick him in to soak too.. haha.... which in turn leads to a clean off and a little additional soak in clean waterWhen I first got Brendel I spent a lot of time reading all the pinned links related to Sulcatas. Already looks like you're getting some tips from the pros around here. To this day I still try to soak him once a day....
It looks to me like you already have a pretty nice setup going. .....
I wish you and Charlie good luck, it looks like he found a caring home.
Yes, I usually end up changing the water two to three times per bath for the same reason. It's great that you're able to modify your enclosure to suit Charlie's needs. From what I've seen; when the pyramiding starts to correct, it won't fix the scutes current shape, the new growth will come in flat instead of a stacking effect that you're getting now.Thank you! and I too will stick to a daily soak... I like to talk to him anyway.... so he gets me to bug him (as he rolls his eyes)... haha... and some nice poops going when I stick him in to soak too.. haha.... which in turn leads to a clean off and a little additional soak in clean water
Charlie is so small ...I am going to say he is about 1 (even though the store said they "thought he was maybe 1.5-2"... uh nope) he only like 3".
I ended up adding an additional CHE at the 'Cool" end, as I didn't like the nighttime temps.... so it is on a thermostat to keep it around 80deg all times.
the Warm side has another CHE on a thermostat and the Bask lamp.... temps around 90 +/- and humidity in tank is 80%. Substrate misted... Charlie misted... all that good stuff.... I hope that helps now with his growth, heath and pyramiding.
I have a tub for a moist "cool" hide... but he doesn't seem interested...... likes to sleep in the corner next to a piece of flagstone.... burrowed a bit in the dirt...... not sure if maybe he doesn't like the hide I gave him