zoe98love
Member
Hello, my name's Zoe and I recently became the owner to a Russian tortoise. It's quite young...I'm not sure of its exact age, and while I think it might be too young to sex, it could possibly be a male. I actually took a risk and bought it off the website Turtle Source, but it arrived perfectly healthy and its been active and curious of its new home. 
Most of my concerns are about having to keep it inside...I live in Pennsylvania, so it won't start getting warm enough here for it to be allowed out until May or June. For now, I keep it indoors in a table with an MVB bulb, and a ceramic heater for nighttime. Another concern would be keeping enough humidity for the little guy. I would love some suggestions about how to keep good amounts of humidity in a tort table. I do have a hide for it, but it doesn't like to use it and simply prefers to bury down into the substrate...I do regularly check the substrate and make sure it's nice and moist. I use a combination of sphagnum moss, cypress mulch, and plantation soil, and haven't had any problem with it.
I keep its diet consisted of a lot of greens, including romaine lettuce, kale, and some other foods, like small carrots. I do plan to feed it more weeds and such once the weather warms up. While it won't gnaw on it whole, it does like cuttlebone when I break it into little pieces and place it in its feed dish. I soak it every other day in baby warm water, which gives me the chance to look it over and make sure nothing's wrong.
While I keep the tortoise separate from other pets in my house, I do have one cat that sometimes gets in...but she is never allowed in when I'm not there and so far hasn't done anything wrong. She just likes to watch the tort crawl around from a distance.
I've already fallen in love with my new tort and want to provide it with the best conditions possible to my ability. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! Thank you for reading!
Most of my concerns are about having to keep it inside...I live in Pennsylvania, so it won't start getting warm enough here for it to be allowed out until May or June. For now, I keep it indoors in a table with an MVB bulb, and a ceramic heater for nighttime. Another concern would be keeping enough humidity for the little guy. I would love some suggestions about how to keep good amounts of humidity in a tort table. I do have a hide for it, but it doesn't like to use it and simply prefers to bury down into the substrate...I do regularly check the substrate and make sure it's nice and moist. I use a combination of sphagnum moss, cypress mulch, and plantation soil, and haven't had any problem with it.
I keep its diet consisted of a lot of greens, including romaine lettuce, kale, and some other foods, like small carrots. I do plan to feed it more weeds and such once the weather warms up. While it won't gnaw on it whole, it does like cuttlebone when I break it into little pieces and place it in its feed dish. I soak it every other day in baby warm water, which gives me the chance to look it over and make sure nothing's wrong.
While I keep the tortoise separate from other pets in my house, I do have one cat that sometimes gets in...but she is never allowed in when I'm not there and so far hasn't done anything wrong. She just likes to watch the tort crawl around from a distance.
I've already fallen in love with my new tort and want to provide it with the best conditions possible to my ability.
If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! Thank you for reading!
