Arilyna
New Member
To make a long story short, on Saturday, my boyfriend got excited and bought a baby sulcata tortoise at the local Repticon. I don’t know the sex, but I’ve been calling it a her and the name is Agave. She is maybe two inches going vertically down the shell, not including head or tail length and she has her egg tooth.
The guy who sold her to us did not give us good information: keep her on cedar chips, use a Rubbermaid tub to keep her warm, turn off the heat at night, etc. As you can see, we are not set up for this baby- it’s a forty gallon tank with a wire lid, ugh.
Her basking spot has been 100ish with the 100w heat bulb, that’s a reptisun 10.0 UVB bulb in the middle (which is not close enough) and I had to add the third smaller light on the end because that side was 73 degrees during the day when we got home. When I added the third bulb, it brought that side up to 77, but the basking spot hit 105.7 before we had to cut it off for bedtime. I’ve kept the 100w bulb on for the night because the guy at the con said to turn off the heat lights at night and she’d be fine, but I know now that 68 degrees at night is too cold.
There’s a lot of information out there and a lot of misinformation out there and I think this is more of an SOS situation than muddling through info will allow. She hasn’t really eaten other than when we took her outside for a bit yesterday. We’ve been giving her grass/clover mixed with turnip greens and some moistened grassland pellets. We had a terra cotta plate in there for water, but it’s too big for her and I don’t want her to flip when we’re at work, so I’ll be filling some deli lids with water until we can get this sorted. She’s on a mixture of spaghum moss, cypress mulch and loose coco fiber. My boyfriend has misted the cool side once a day, but I’m sure that’s not enough with the open top.
I’ve found these enclosures online, would one of these be acceptable until we get this sorted?
And I’ve been on forums before, I know people are going to hop on and tell us we’re awful and should have had the enclosure set up beforehand, Etc, let me just say that I know this. We’re trying to fix our mistake because now she’s here and I want her to survive. I appreciate the help ladies and gents.
The guy who sold her to us did not give us good information: keep her on cedar chips, use a Rubbermaid tub to keep her warm, turn off the heat at night, etc. As you can see, we are not set up for this baby- it’s a forty gallon tank with a wire lid, ugh.
Her basking spot has been 100ish with the 100w heat bulb, that’s a reptisun 10.0 UVB bulb in the middle (which is not close enough) and I had to add the third smaller light on the end because that side was 73 degrees during the day when we got home. When I added the third bulb, it brought that side up to 77, but the basking spot hit 105.7 before we had to cut it off for bedtime. I’ve kept the 100w bulb on for the night because the guy at the con said to turn off the heat lights at night and she’d be fine, but I know now that 68 degrees at night is too cold.
There’s a lot of information out there and a lot of misinformation out there and I think this is more of an SOS situation than muddling through info will allow. She hasn’t really eaten other than when we took her outside for a bit yesterday. We’ve been giving her grass/clover mixed with turnip greens and some moistened grassland pellets. We had a terra cotta plate in there for water, but it’s too big for her and I don’t want her to flip when we’re at work, so I’ll be filling some deli lids with water until we can get this sorted. She’s on a mixture of spaghum moss, cypress mulch and loose coco fiber. My boyfriend has misted the cool side once a day, but I’m sure that’s not enough with the open top.
I’ve found these enclosures online, would one of these be acceptable until we get this sorted?
And I’ve been on forums before, I know people are going to hop on and tell us we’re awful and should have had the enclosure set up beforehand, Etc, let me just say that I know this. We’re trying to fix our mistake because now she’s here and I want her to survive. I appreciate the help ladies and gents.