daglapsy
New Member
Hello everyone, my name is Alli and I live in San Francisco, California. We just recently welcomed a leopard tortoise hatchling into the family. His/her name is Saxon and he/she is a 8 week old ball of adorable! I've had dogs and cats for years, but this is my first experience with reptiles.
My boyfriend and I are both pretty smitten already. We were surprised to see how extroverted this little hatchling turned out to be. He/she doesn't seem to be afraid of anything and has a ferocious appetite. He'll gladly eat a piece of zucchini out of the hands of someone who he has never even met before.
We're using a 30 gallon terrarium (for now) with a 50:50 ratio cypress mulch and coconut coir combination for the substrate. We have provided a humid hide at 78-80 degrees, a shaded area at 80-85 degrees, open ground at 90-95 degrees, and a slate for basking at 100 degrees. We keep the humidity between 75-85%. We have a 10.0 UV light on a 12 hour timer cycle and a ceramic heat element. We provide a shallow water dish and food bowl that stay inside the terrarium. We feed him once a day in the morning a combination of organic spring mix or organic collard greens and a ground pellet of ZooMed grassland tortoise food on top of a cut-up moistened pile of either timothy hay, orchard grass, or bermuda grass. There's always food left over at the end of the day. I know I need to improve the variety of the diet, but I'm depending on grocery store foods until I figure out access to prickly pear cactus, dandelion greens and clovers.
I apologize for how long this post is, but it's very important to me that I give the best life possible to this little one. I would love to hear any constructive criticism, corrections or tips anyone has to offer me. I've been working hard on doing my research and I'm here to learn from all you wonderfully experienced veterans. This is all new to me so any words of wisdom would be appreciated. Thanks for reading!
My boyfriend and I are both pretty smitten already. We were surprised to see how extroverted this little hatchling turned out to be. He/she doesn't seem to be afraid of anything and has a ferocious appetite. He'll gladly eat a piece of zucchini out of the hands of someone who he has never even met before.
We're using a 30 gallon terrarium (for now) with a 50:50 ratio cypress mulch and coconut coir combination for the substrate. We have provided a humid hide at 78-80 degrees, a shaded area at 80-85 degrees, open ground at 90-95 degrees, and a slate for basking at 100 degrees. We keep the humidity between 75-85%. We have a 10.0 UV light on a 12 hour timer cycle and a ceramic heat element. We provide a shallow water dish and food bowl that stay inside the terrarium. We feed him once a day in the morning a combination of organic spring mix or organic collard greens and a ground pellet of ZooMed grassland tortoise food on top of a cut-up moistened pile of either timothy hay, orchard grass, or bermuda grass. There's always food left over at the end of the day. I know I need to improve the variety of the diet, but I'm depending on grocery store foods until I figure out access to prickly pear cactus, dandelion greens and clovers.
I apologize for how long this post is, but it's very important to me that I give the best life possible to this little one. I would love to hear any constructive criticism, corrections or tips anyone has to offer me. I've been working hard on doing my research and I'm here to learn from all you wonderfully experienced veterans. This is all new to me so any words of wisdom would be appreciated. Thanks for reading!
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