Anyone got experience using Reptile Grass as substrate?

[seanang168]

I have been using Newspaper as substrate for the last ten years for my two stars. For a change, I bought 4 Paw Reptile carpet grass as new substrate for them. However after one night, the stars half over turned the carpet grass and hide underneath, a habit they developed when I used Newspaper.

The carpet grass appears to be always wet from their urine and furthermore it already starts to smell the next day.

I am concerned whether would this moisture be bad for the Stars? Also how often do you need to wash this carpet grass? I am thinking of washing it every 2 -3 days. Seemed like using this carpet grass requires more maintanance than using Newspaper (just need to throw away).

Is using carpet grass good for long term or should I revert back to Newspaper?

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Seanang168:

Wow!! Ten years! You must be doing something right. Most stories about Star tortoises end by the tortoise dying before reaching ONE year! One of our forum members is having pretty good luck with his stars and even wrote a published article for Reptiles magazine. Go to his site and click on the link "Species Profile" to read the article.

http://www.turtletary.com/stars.html

I'm so glad to have you join us here on the forum! 10 years! I'm so proud of you. Let us see a picture of your tortoises. I'll bet they're beauties.

to the forum!!!

 

[seanang168]

Hi Seanang168:

Wow!! Ten years! You must be doing something right. Most stories about Star tortoises end by the tortoise dying before reaching ONE year! One of our forum members is having pretty good luck with his stars and even wrote a published article for Reptiles magazine. Go to his site and click on the link "Species Profile" to read the article.

http://www.turtletary.com/stars.html

I'm so glad to have you join us here on the forum! 10 years! I'm so proud of you. Let us see a picture of your tortoises. I'll bet they're beauties.

to the forum!!!

Yeah they are pretty big now, husband and wife team. Wife is very much larger and has laid 7 eggs so far. But I do not have much luck with the eggs. 2 has exploded. I believed now only has 3 left that is still viable (from OCT 09 batch). The other 2 is from Mar 09 batch I believed they may be dead?

Back to the reptile grass, I noted when it dries, it doesn't really smell as much and seemed ok to use. Just that the tortoise make a mess of it. But this particular brand of grass sheds its felt grass very easily. I think it may last months only. And using this grass did reduce the dust I have in the enclosure, previously the newspapers generate a moderate amount of dust.

I am new to this forum and yet to find out how to upload photos. Will do so when I learned . Thanks for the link I will go read it!

 

[Yvonne G]

I'm guessing that by "reptile grass" you are talking about some sort of artificial carpeting especially made for reptiles???

I don't like to use that sort of product. Not to say it can't be used. Its just that there are so many other substrates that I like better.

In the article I referred to, Terry shows us that he uses grass hay as substrate for his stars. I've seen stars kept on regular dirt. There's a gal here in my city who has a bunch of stars and she keeps them on paper towells. I think it boils down to what works for you and what makes your tortoises happy and healthy.

 

[seanang168]

I'm guessing that by "reptile grass" you are talking about some sort of artificial carpeting especially made for reptiles???

I don't like to use that sort of product. Not to say it can't be used. Its just that there are so many other substrates that I like better.

In the article I referred to, Terry shows us that he uses grass hay as substrate for his stars. I've seen stars kept on regular dirt. There's a gal here in my city who has a bunch of stars and she keeps them on paper towells. I think it boils down to what works for you and what makes your tortoises happy and healthy.

Yes that is the one. Pets stuff over here (not in US) is very expensive as everything needs to be imported say from US across the globe. Hence if I ended up just using newspaper all this while. I may try out some timonthy hay. Seemed like many of you say is good to use?

What kind of care is needed when using timonthy hay? e.g. Do we remove wet ones whenever we seeand top up with fresh ones or just do a weekly total replacement??

 

[Yvonne G]

Yes, hay will get moldy when it gets wet. So you need to keep on top of that and pick out the wet hay when you see it.

 

[seanang168]

Yes, hay will get moldy when it gets wet. So you need to keep on top of that and pick out the wet hay when you see it.

Hi it has been about two months since I am using a reptile grass substrate. Actually I still use my classic newspaper method to overlay some portion of grass substrate as the poop makes it quite messy for me to keep washing the grass substrate. With newspaper I just wrapped it up and throw away.

However the stars like to crawl all over the substrate and it is always moved hence I still need to clean the enclosure regularly.

In the end, I feel that the grass substrate did not help me in terms of workload, it just makes the look of the set up nicer. Probably it did reduce the dust generated as I used less newspaper compared to last time.