Kala
Active Member
@Tom the Viv is staying around 23 degrees over night, is that ok? Not too warm?Those enclosures are not good for any tortoise species at any time in their life. They are too open for babies and too small for any adult. Also, the wood will quickly rot under the necessary dampness in the substrate. You need a closed chamber. In your country they call them vivariums. Outdoor humidity has nothing to do with how dry it will be in a temperature controlled home in a small tortoise enclosure with desiccating electric heat lamps. It can be 100% humidity outside your home and 20% humidity inside the heated tortoise enclosure. Trying to keep an open topped enclosure warm and humid is like trying to heat your house in winter with no roof on it. Its impossible. Open topped enclosure only work if the room temperature and humidity are what the tortoise needs. Get a large vivarium.
Probably not quite enough. You need an 8-10cm layer and it should be kept damp. If you are doing the recommended daily soaks for a baby, they will poop and pee in the soak water and you will never need to replace the substrate. Never use edible bedding. You don't want to teach a tortoise to eat its bedding and also, the necessary dampness will make it rot and mold.
I prefer coco coir for little babies, and then I switch them onto orchid bark when they reach around 9cm.
Get four terra cotta plant saucers. Two for food and two for water. When one is soiled you can remove it and replace it with a clean one, and then clean the dirty one at your leisure and let it dry in the hot sun for disinfection. They always break at the most inopportune times, so you will be glad you had extras on hand.
Any size cuttlefish bone is fine. With a good varied well balanced diet, your tortoise may ignore the cuttlefish bone for months. That's normal and okay. Just leave it in there anyway.
Get a tortoise safe vitamin supplement and use that once a week or so. Just a tiny pinch mixed in. Get a separate calcium supplement with D3 in it. Use that one around twice a week. Again, just a tiny tiny pinch mixed in thoroughly. You can't overdose your tortoise on the small amount of D3 in these supplements and using it so infrequently. I prefer Herptevite for vitamins and Repcal for calcium, but there are other brands that will work just fine too.
The Arcadia heat lamp should work. Only YOUR thermometer in YOUR enclosure can tell you if 75 watts is the correct bulb, and what the correct mounting height will be. In a viv, you will likely need a smaller bulb. If you use the plastic greenhouse tent method, a 75 watt will probably work. With an open topped enclosure, you might need 100-150 watts since all your heat will be heating the room more than the enclosure. Check the basking temp by laying a digital thermometer on its back at tortoise shell height directly under the basking bulb and letting it cook there for an hour or more. Temperature should be around 35-37C. Raise or lower the fixture as needed. In a viv with the fixture mounted to the ceiling, you may need to lower or raise the wattage by using a different bulb, or run the bulb through a rheostat (aka: dimmer switch, but NOT a dimming thermostat) to adjust the wattage and get the correct temperature under it.
Don't forget ambient LED lighting. This is necessary to make it look bright and "sunny" in the indoor enclosure. You will likely need ambient heat in your climate too, but that depends on the room temp. I like to keep babies no lower than 20-21C over night, though they can tolerate it lower in most cases. Adults can handle 10C over night with no problem.
You do not need a dimmable thermostat and shouldn't use one. Your heat lamp should be the correct wattage, set to the correct height, and it should be controlled by a timer. It should be on for 12-13 hours a day. You don't want the "sun" turning on and off all day.
Yes on the ProT5 kit. The only way to mount it correctly is with a Solarmeter 6.5 used in YOUR enclosure. Every bulb and every enclosure is different, but in my enclosures, somewhere around 46 to 50 CM above the tortoise is about right. Without a meter, I would err on the high side. If you are getting the tortoise outside for sunshine in warmer weather and using a calcium supplement with D3, then you are triple ensured and will never see any hint of MBD, so go a little higher to the 50 cm recommendation on your bulb mounting height guess. If you get a meter someday, then you can lower the tube as needed.
Here is a breakdown of the four heating and lighting essentials:
- Basking bulb. I use 65 watt incandescent floods from the hardware store. Some people will need bigger, or smaller wattage bulbs. Let your thermometer be your guide. I run them on a timer for about 12 hours and adjust the height to get the correct basking temp under them. I also like to use a flat rock of some sort directly under the bulb. You need to check the temp with a thermometer directly under the bulb and get it to around 95-100F (36-37C).
- Ambient heat maintenance. I use ceramic heating elements or radiant heat panels set on thermostats to maintain ambient above 80 degrees day and night for tropical species. In most cases you'd only need day heat for a temperate species like Testudo or DT, as long as your house stays above 60F (15-16C) at night. Some people in colder climates or with larger enclosures will need multiple CHEs or RHPs to spread out enough heat.
- Ambient light. I use LEDs for this purpose. Something in the 5000-6500K color range will look the best. Most bulbs at the store are in the 2500K range and they look yellowish. Strip or screw-in LED bulb types are both fine.
- UV. If you can get your tortoise outside for an hour 2 or 3 times a week, you won't need indoor UV. In colder climates, get one of the newer HO type fluorescent tubes. Which type will depend on mounting height. 5.0 bulbs make almost no UV. I like the 12% HO bulbs from Arcadia. You need a meter to check this: https://www.solarmeter.com/model65.html A good UV bulb only needs to run for 2-3 hours mid day. You need the basking bulb and the ambient lighting to be on at least 12 hours a day.
Yes, but be sure the tortoise can't/doesn't flip. I use large rocks, logs and other such "hard scape" items. Another tip is to cut branches from edible trees and bushes and throw those in there for cover and grazing. I use mulberry branches, grape vines (no grapes), lavatera branches, hibiscus branches, etc... I replace them every few days or as needed as they wilt.
You'll need a humid hide, which is an opaque plastic tub flipped upside down with a small door hole cut out. Keep the substrate under it damp. Don't use moss.
Plants will be eaten or trampled, so best to keep them in pots and also be sure that store bought plants are not grown with systemic pesticides, as they all are here. Best to grow your own from seeds or cuttings. I like hanging pots in my vivs too. You get the benefit of live plants without using up any more floor space.
Don't be overwhelmed by all of this. Just take one item at time. When you set it all up correctly in the first place, things work flawlessly and tortoise keeping is so easy and fun. When people set things up how the pet shop tells them too, it is frustrating and doesn't work very well for several reasons. We will help you all along the way to make sure you are successful.
