How is my table?

saginawhxc

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Okay I have been meaning to ask this for weeks now, but I have been so insanely busy.

Somewhere about a month ago I finally upgraded Winchester's table.

When I rescued him he was in a 2'x3' table with dry wood chips for substrate and no hide. He spent the better part of the first month and a half living mostly outside and coming in on the colder nights and staying in his old table (with an added hide). I had planned on building him a better set up right from the get go, but fall is always so busy for me and he seemed content outside in a set up where he had access to about 40 square feet. Anyways I built this about a month ago now. Well over half of it is salvaged wood from a construction site I'm on. Not counting the hide I bet I have less than $15 into it. The hide cost about $25 to make.

The hide (lower left corner) is built out of pvc trim and I gave it a hinged top so I could fasten the hide into place semi permanently but still have easy access to remove him if needed.

It is 6'x3'. I would have liked to go bigger, but this is what i have to work with till we get in the new house. It has a two inch lip running around the entire thing, and one end is covered by the printer because that was the compromise I reached with the girlfriend for taking away office space for another tortoise table.

He used his pvc hide constantly the first two weeks or so, but now seem to prefers the end underneath the printer.

The substrate is 50/50 dug up earth from my back yard and coco coir.. I have lived here for eight years and have never used any chemicals on my lawn so I figure that to be fairly safe. I might have added more than 50% dirt, because it certainly looks like more dirt than coir, but I was aiming for a 50/50 mix and it should be close.

Liner is a double layer of 6 mil plastic stapled into place at the top.

Light is a mvb and basking spot is 100f.

I have a seed mix from tortoise supply starting to grow just now. I just planted that a few days ago. I also planted some dandelions.
 

Blakem

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Good work. That space will work for winter. Come spring your Russian will be pacing! They like space. do you have space outside for that time? One other thing, I'd recommend buying a ceramic fixture. Yours looks plastic and if it gets too hot it can melt
 

saginawhxc

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He had a small temporary set up outside this September, but he'll have a much bigger chunk of space next summer. We are mid process on buying a house right now that will provide three times the back yard space and nearly 1000 square feet of basement space that will be mostly mine to do with what I want. So there is a good chance he will be upgrading indoor enclosure again in a month or two.
 

Yvonne G

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I like it! You've done yourself proud. I second the light fixture, especially if that's a MVB. They get pretty hot.
 

AJK Aquaria

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Well done. Read your other thread on how you acquired him. Good to see he's doing well. Stumbled on a released/escaped Russian myself this summer.
 

saginawhxc

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What's funny is I thought I had replaced all of my other lights with ceramic ones long ago. About the time I built this I even bought four brand new brooding lamps and yet for some reason this was the light I grabbed and used and for some stupid reason never looked at it twice until you guys pointed it out.

Those brooding lamps are still sitting in my garage collecting dust.
 

Steve_carter

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Looks great! If you don't mind me asking what is your soil/coir depth? Thinking of going for a 50/50 mix myself for my table. My tort (horsefield) is roughly over a year old now & do you spray the substrate to keep moisture or just replace with new after so long?
 

saginawhxc

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I would say about 4 inches deep. It is 9 bricks of coir and I kept bringing in dirt till I was happy with the level.

For the dirt I actually dug up an old unused garden so the dirt seemed to be really good black dirt.

I've been spraying slightly for moisture to keep it damp enough it grow some greenery.
 

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