Hi,
I have just purchased my first tortoise two days ago.
I built the table from scratch, 4ft x 2ft. On the left hand side is roughly a 1ft x 2ft inclosed home for the tortoise and the rest of the space is an open area for the tortoise to roam around.
I've filled it with Tortoise life substrate relatively deep incase it wants to bury itself at all at night when temps drop. Has a shallow enough water bowl, a slate tile with the correct food on, calcium powder and it seems to be liking the food and eating correctly.
I have a long strip bulb (Arcadia ProT5 UVB Kit) which is 11.5-12 inches above the shell of the tortoise and the same with the heat bulb.
The cool end is reading around 20 degrees celsius virtually all day and night and under the heat is roughly 34 degrees celcius in the day (12 hours)
In the morning the shell feels slightly cold but that's obviously external so I assume internally it's okay.
The last two nights it's gone to sleep around 7pm roughly and when I'm up in the mornings around 8am it's still asleep so I carefully put the tortoise in the open part of the table and turn the lights back on.
This is where I get a bit concerned because it starts to rub its eyes a couple of times (I guess that maybe due to me waking it up and putting it under the light but I want to make sure it gets warmed up and doesn't stay asleep or should I just leave it?)
Also bubbles come out of it's nose a few times, sounds like it's sneezing etc)
Seems a bit a slow in the mornings but then once warmed up or something it starts to move around and yesterday was quite active and ate a lot of food.
I'll add some pictures shortly. I hope I've given enough information and thank you for taking your time to read, any help is much appreciated and let me know if you need anymore information.
I have just purchased my first tortoise two days ago.
I built the table from scratch, 4ft x 2ft. On the left hand side is roughly a 1ft x 2ft inclosed home for the tortoise and the rest of the space is an open area for the tortoise to roam around.
I've filled it with Tortoise life substrate relatively deep incase it wants to bury itself at all at night when temps drop. Has a shallow enough water bowl, a slate tile with the correct food on, calcium powder and it seems to be liking the food and eating correctly.
I have a long strip bulb (Arcadia ProT5 UVB Kit) which is 11.5-12 inches above the shell of the tortoise and the same with the heat bulb.
The cool end is reading around 20 degrees celsius virtually all day and night and under the heat is roughly 34 degrees celcius in the day (12 hours)
In the morning the shell feels slightly cold but that's obviously external so I assume internally it's okay.
The last two nights it's gone to sleep around 7pm roughly and when I'm up in the mornings around 8am it's still asleep so I carefully put the tortoise in the open part of the table and turn the lights back on.
This is where I get a bit concerned because it starts to rub its eyes a couple of times (I guess that maybe due to me waking it up and putting it under the light but I want to make sure it gets warmed up and doesn't stay asleep or should I just leave it?)
Also bubbles come out of it's nose a few times, sounds like it's sneezing etc)
Seems a bit a slow in the mornings but then once warmed up or something it starts to move around and yesterday was quite active and ate a lot of food.
I'll add some pictures shortly. I hope I've given enough information and thank you for taking your time to read, any help is much appreciated and let me know if you need anymore information.