janec727
New Member
Hello and allow me to introduce Stu, the Marginated tortoise hatchling. We welcomed into our (new) home in New Jersey 2 days ago. He is a little over 1 month old.
As I noted in the topic title of this post, my fiancé and I are first time tortoise owners. I am very thankful to have found this forum months ago, as it helped me understand if we can or should be tortoise owners capable of taking care of one properly. So thank you everyone for giving us the confidence to act on this “tortoise dream” we had since we bought our first home together in March.
As such, the main purpose of this introduction is to hear thoughts and feedback from the community here, as the majority of you all are obviously more experienced tortoise owners compared to us and our whopping 48 hours thus far
Attached/below are pictures of Stu’s baby enclosure. We used this forum as our primary source of information when planning our set up for Stu, but now that he’s here I still wonder if there’s anything we could and should be doing better.
Below are further details I know you all love
— Temps —
Warm side: 81 degrees Fahrenheit
Cool side: 78 degrees Fahrenheit
Basking spot: 97 degrees Fahrenheit
Night: ~ 73 degrees F the last 2 nights
— Lights —
UVA: Aomryom 100W Basking Spot Heat Lamp Bulb UVA Soft White Light Glass Heat Bulbs for Reptiles & Amphibians
UVB: Zoo Med 26396 Reptisun 15W 10.0 T5-Ho Uvb Fluorescent Lamp, 12"
** I do have some concerns with this uvb light - is it too small? Also, the fixture it is installed in has a blue-ish reflective hood, so it makes the light give off a blue tint. I know colored lights are usually not recommended, so I’m wondering if this needs to be changed.
— Substrate & Humidity —
We started off only using coconut coir. But I noticed over these past 2 days, Stu kept his eyes closed most of the time, except when I would give him his daily soak (and he’d wash the coir off his face). The coco coir also appeared to dry out on the surface quite quickly, despite the enclosure consistently maintaining 85%-89% humidity. So today (and shown in the pics below) I mixed in with the coir a little bit of clean top soil, and some cypress mulch on the warm side of his enclosure (as a smaller test area).
Stu’s home is a 2’x3’ raised “greenhouse” I lined with pond liner. When Stu outgrows this set up, I plan to move this to our back deck to use as an actual mini-greenhouse to grow plants to be used in Stu’s future enclosures. And when Stu is big enough, he will be living outside in the vegetable garden that is in our new home’s backyard (around 600 sq ft). It was after a lot of research and careful observation of this new vegetable garden that we decided we could in fact be tortoise owners.
Last but not least, here are some pics of Stu, The teSTUdo Wonder Tortoise, who loves eating greens and appears to enjoy his water temp the most when it gets to 95 degrees:
As I noted in the topic title of this post, my fiancé and I are first time tortoise owners. I am very thankful to have found this forum months ago, as it helped me understand if we can or should be tortoise owners capable of taking care of one properly. So thank you everyone for giving us the confidence to act on this “tortoise dream” we had since we bought our first home together in March.
As such, the main purpose of this introduction is to hear thoughts and feedback from the community here, as the majority of you all are obviously more experienced tortoise owners compared to us and our whopping 48 hours thus far
Attached/below are pictures of Stu’s baby enclosure. We used this forum as our primary source of information when planning our set up for Stu, but now that he’s here I still wonder if there’s anything we could and should be doing better.
Below are further details I know you all love
— Temps —
Warm side: 81 degrees Fahrenheit
Cool side: 78 degrees Fahrenheit
Basking spot: 97 degrees Fahrenheit
Night: ~ 73 degrees F the last 2 nights
— Lights —
UVA: Aomryom 100W Basking Spot Heat Lamp Bulb UVA Soft White Light Glass Heat Bulbs for Reptiles & Amphibians
UVB: Zoo Med 26396 Reptisun 15W 10.0 T5-Ho Uvb Fluorescent Lamp, 12"
** I do have some concerns with this uvb light - is it too small? Also, the fixture it is installed in has a blue-ish reflective hood, so it makes the light give off a blue tint. I know colored lights are usually not recommended, so I’m wondering if this needs to be changed.
— Substrate & Humidity —
We started off only using coconut coir. But I noticed over these past 2 days, Stu kept his eyes closed most of the time, except when I would give him his daily soak (and he’d wash the coir off his face). The coco coir also appeared to dry out on the surface quite quickly, despite the enclosure consistently maintaining 85%-89% humidity. So today (and shown in the pics below) I mixed in with the coir a little bit of clean top soil, and some cypress mulch on the warm side of his enclosure (as a smaller test area).
Stu’s home is a 2’x3’ raised “greenhouse” I lined with pond liner. When Stu outgrows this set up, I plan to move this to our back deck to use as an actual mini-greenhouse to grow plants to be used in Stu’s future enclosures. And when Stu is big enough, he will be living outside in the vegetable garden that is in our new home’s backyard (around 600 sq ft). It was after a lot of research and careful observation of this new vegetable garden that we decided we could in fact be tortoise owners.
Last but not least, here are some pics of Stu, The teSTUdo Wonder Tortoise, who loves eating greens and appears to enjoy his water temp the most when it gets to 95 degrees: