Introducing Tippy Land 4.0!

[Jhwells46]

Hey everyone! My name is Julia and about three months ago I purchased a one year old Leopard Tortoise and her name is Tippy. I have fiddled around with her enclosure a lot, and I think I've finally nailed it. Her habitat is a 6'x2' shoe rack that I repurposed and sits over a massive heat vent so no matter what I know that her table is always heated to at least 75 degrees ambient temperature. I have a UVB/heat bulb that heats her hot/humid side and a low watt night time bulb over her water dish to keep it warm for her. Her substrate is a mixture of fine and coarse coconut coir and she has a lot of moist sphagnum moss to maintain her humidity throughout the table since it's so hard to maintain with an open table. Her hot humid hide is repurposed door screen with a layer of plastic wrap, which has worked great so far. There's also a mini garden of wandering jew, hens and chicks, aloe, mallow, fescue and watercress in a sunken planter in her hot side which also helps maintain humidity and she loves to hide in the plants! She has another garden on her cooler side with more fescue, garden sage, nasturtium, and soon to be cat grass (waiting to sprout). I like the idea of her being able to forage for some snacks Her cool hide is a rice steamer with Spanish/sphagnum mix which I like to call her "pagoda". She has been running around happy as can be all day and I'm really excited about it! Experts, how did I do??

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Oh she also has some yard onions in one of her gardens, which I understood to be just fine for them to eat. Please correct me if that's wrong. Thanks!

 

[joseppa96]

I'm not an expert, but I think your tank looks really nice I tried having plants in mine before, but Faven ate them faster than they could grow lol

 

[Jhwells46]

Yeah she's busting out of those salad training wheels fast and is munching a lot more on her edible landscaping Also, her temps are as follows; 75 ambient room temp, 80 cool side, 90-95 hot and 100-105 on her basking stone. Humid hot hide is 65-75% now as I've had to slowly bring it up from previous sub-par humidity. It's now about 50% on her cool side.

 

[Brandonfij01]

Looks really nice [WINKING FACE]

 

[wellington]

Look nice. Sounds like you got things covered. The only suggestions I have is to get a CHE for night time heat, they are fairly cheap and will not give off light, but only heat and they last a long time. Also, those disc type temp and humidity gauges you are using are very unreliable. Get a digital with a probe, about ten bucks on up at Home Depot.

 

[Jhwells46]

I bought a good digital one at Lowes today and it does both humidity and temperature. It's kinda hard to see in the pictures but it occupies the hot/humid hide. I have another very accurate temp gauge at her cool end. Just figured it wouldn't hurt to leave the crappy gauge stuck in there. I will definitely go get a CHE tomorrow

 

[T33's Torts]

I have a 4 year old cousin that calls me Tippy.

 

[Jhwells46]

Aww! We named her after a SNL skit about an annoying drunken turtle from the 80s. You should Google Tippy the Turtle SNL, it's pretty funny!

 

[T33's Torts]

Re: RE: Introducing Tippy Land 4.0!

Aww! We named her after a SNL skit about an annoying drunken turtle from the 80s. You should Google Tippy the Turtle SNL, it's pretty funny!

Will do!

 

[Andrea M]

She's gorgeous

 

[Jhwells46]

Thank you!! She's a sweet little thing