Tubs of water in the tort house, does it really make a difference?

[stinax182]

i would definitely add sphagnum moss into the hide. you'll probably need to wet it daily. i currently use a mix of top soil and coco coir. the top soil is heavy so it stops the coir from fluffing up and getting messy. i spray the humid hide daily and the entire enclosure weekly. i have a che hanging in the humid hide (just a giant rubbermaid container with a hole for the for door and in the top for the che to hang) and i notice it dries the top out but leaves the bottom wet so i added a heating pad under the rubbermaid container.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

Sintax, do you do this in an outdoor heated tort house? Or is yours an indoor enclosure?

I added another strip of tape to the liner for now. I don't want to do anything permanent just yet since I'm still testing this out.
I added some sphagnum moss. It was what I had left over from a bag. I'll add more to it.

Am I going to have to deal with mold on the wood inside the house since there is some moisture now? Ay....

They've burrowed into the dirt a bit. Disregard the 24hr high/low recordings since it's brand new.

I'll see how this goes for now...wish us luck

The pics are blurry because it was dark out and I had no clue what I was shooting at..lol

 

[Cowboy_Ken]

So why not use a full sheet of vinyl linoleum as the floor with the corners sealed with silicon? That should be easy to use. Figure your floor dimensions, then add 8" and cut an 8" square at each corner which will allow you to fold 8" up the walls. All seams and upper edge can be sealed with silicon, or for the top you could fasten it with metal threshold strips.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

Ken, I really like that idea. Thx.

If I stick with dirt substrate in here, I might just do that. It would look so much nicer. :shy:
I want to give this some time to test it before I make a serious change. Everyone else seems to use bare wood floor or hay so I feel like I'm testing the waters a bit.
But hey, if I'm wrong and you out there are using moist dirt for increased humidity in your outdoor heated hide then please...chime in and share!

 

[Cowboy_Ken]

My box has horse stall mats down. These are like recycled tires that are about 1-1/2" thick. They have grooves in them for traction. These sit on plywood that is mounted to a pallet. Here in Oregon, seepage from the ground is a real issue and I didn't want my big sullys on wet dirt. The mats help maintain the cold from coming up. I don't have anything inside the shed to increase humidity. The crap and pee inside and that adds plenty, but really I don't monitor the levels. These, though, are 50+ pounders, not young ones.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

I see...

These guys are still around the 6" mark and the hay had them in the 20%RH range. I definitely don't want it that low.

 

[Cowboy_Ken]

I see...

These guys are still around the 6" mark and the hay had them in the 20%RH range. I definitely don't want it that low.

I'm with you on that. Yours are too young for my type of shed. My shed is 4' tall, with the radiator type heater like you have. If smaller, younger tortoises were to use it, I would put a goodwill cake or bread pan on the heater to see how that would help with humidity. Or I'd do as Sibi has done and use a humidifier on a Hygrotherm.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

I think I need to re read what sibi has done. I must not have understood it the first time I read it...

 

[Cowboy_Ken]

I think I need to re read what sibi has done. I must not have understood it the first time I read it...

I think she gets into detail on it in chat or maybe she started a thread on it. She's working on 80% humidity for hers.

 

[Dizisdalife]

My sulcata night box is a 6'x4'x2' high copy of Tom's "best night box design". With 3 shallow water dishes and an occasional sponge placed by the heater (oil filled radiator) it stays at 60% RH. If I left the sponge in there all the time, and kept it wet, the RH would get above 70%. I backed off a little on the humidity because I had some mold issues. Not serious ones, but I wanted to get it corrected before they became serious. When I open the door and the cool outdoor air hits the vinyl flap there is condensation. It ran into one of the corners and grew some mold. There was a little cool air coming in around the lid and that caused some mold too. Again, cool air from outside hitting the warm moist air inside causing condensation. I cleaned up the mold with vinegar and water. Since then we have had really warm weather with rather low outdoor humidity so the mold issue has faded for now.

 

[julietteq]

They've burrowed into the dirt a bit. Disregard the 24hr high/low recordings since it's brand new.

The torts are gorgeous ! How old are they?

 

[Cowboy_Ken]

Heather, did you find Sibi's thread?

 

[Levi the Leopard]

Re: RE: Tubs of water in the tort house, does it really make a difference?

Heather, did you find Sibi's thread?

It's on my "to do list" for next time I'm on my PC :shy:

 

[Tom]

Everyone else seems to use bare wood floor or hay so I feel like I'm testing the waters a bit.

This is true, but I'm finding it to be a problem. Our climate is just so dry and we are getting NO rain. I'm having growth issues with juveniles outside due to the extreme dryness. I'm trying some new things too, but this thread has been helpful.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

Tom, after some testing lets share results.
So far the dirt and moss in the house is keeping between 64-70% RH. I haven't added water or anything. Ideally I'd like it to drop closer to 60% because I really don't want to deal with mold in there. But it's only been, what, 2 days?

 

[mike taylor]

Tom in your under ground tortoise house does it have a floor in it or is it just dirt ? In a natural borrow they poop and pee in there . This will make humidity on its own . In some reading I have found they also pull grass and what not down into the borrow . Do you climb down in and clean your borrow out? I have also read where a keeper had floors in his tortoise houses and the tortoise would try to borrow under them instead of going into them . Then he took the floors out and stopped cleaning them and adding hay and just let them do there thing . What is your thinking on this? I'm thinking of giving it a try this summer . I am also building a small concrete pond for soaking . So I will be able to catch him soaking and give them a good scrubbing then let him go about his thing .

 

[Tom]

Tom in your under ground tortoise house does it have a floor in it or is it just dirt ? In a natural borrow they poop and pee in there . This will make humidity on its own . In some reading I have found they also pull grass and what not down into the borrow . Do you climb down in and clean your borrow out? I have also read where a keeper had floors in his tortoise houses and the tortoise would try to borrow under them instead of going into them . Then he took the floors out and stopped cleaning them and adding hay and just let them do there thing . What is your thinking on this? I'm thinking of giving it a try this summer . I am also building a small concrete pond for soaking . So I will be able to catch him soaking and give them a good scrubbing then let him go about his thing .

When I first built it, it had open dirt floors. Daisy would dig at the edge just a little bit. I kept filling it in and even blocked it, but she persisted. She was only digging out a little palette for herself, so I decided to just let her do it. A few days went by and I popped the top open to check on her and the whole underground box was half full of dirt. She was digging to China. Once I caught her above ground I went down there and filled in her hole, and retrofitted a 4 piece floor. There are 2" gaps between the floor sections, but not enough room to dig anymore. I have orchid bark down there and a bucket of water, but the electric heat still dries it out significantly in winter.

Check out post number 25 on page two:
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/thread-28662-page-2.html

 

[mike taylor]

It will not let me open that link I dont permission . Why I don't know .

 

[Tom]

It will not let me open that link I dont permission . Why I don't know .

Hmm. It opens for me. I will copy/paste the text for you here, but its out of context without the rest of the posts.

"Update: I left the bottom of her new underground enclosure open so that she'd get the "benefit" of sleeping on real dirt. Daisy is three and a half years old and I got her at three months old. She has never tried to dig or burrow at all in any pen, indoors or out, ever. She lived in my prototype underground enclosure pen for nearly a year, and never dug at all.

For nearly two weeks she wouldn't even use her underground box on her own. I had to put her in the hole through the access portal and then block the entrance to keep her in it at night. And then one day, after around two weeks, I went to retrieve her from her usual spot at dusk and she wasn't there. A quick search around the pen and no Daisy... Could it be? Yes. I popped the lids and there she was looking up at me. From that day on she has put herself away every night.

Now apparently, 3' deep just isn't quite enough. She dug a small cavity for herself under the bottom of the rim of the box. I pulled her out and filled it back in. The next day, same thing. She wasn't going any deeper, but I was worried so I filled it in again and put a cinder block in that spot. Well she dug under the cinderblock and went back to her same spot in the corner of the back of the underground box. I pulled the cinderblock out and just let her have her spot since she wasn't going any deeper. I checked it everyday for a few days, and she wasn't going any further. She seemed to just want to be snuggled in a bit. So I left her and her little cubby hole alone. I let a week go by and when I checked again, there was a huge pile of dirt in the middle of the floor and a giant hole going down into the ground. She was above ground roaming around at the time so I jumped down into the underground box to see just how deep it was. Now, mind you, we are talking about a single, little, 4 pound, 9" tortoise here... It was soooo deep I couldn't see the end! I reached my arm in there up to my shoulder and couldn't touch the back. I climbed out and went and got a flashlight, so I could see just how far she had tunneled in just a few days. I could only see around 3' as it was curving to the left. I began shoving dirt in there to fill it up, and it took a lot of arm loads of dirt before it filled up enough for me to start packing it in there and feel the back. I would estimate 4 1/2 to 5'.

I have no idea how far she would have gone. I have no idea what the temps would be, that far down and away from the heat source. It had to be around 4-5 feet underground if you count down from the surface. The floor of her underground bunker is at three feet deep and she had dug another foot or two downward. I considered just letting her do it her way, but the fear of what could go wrong (collapse, too cold, inaccessible, etc...) made me decide to not let it go on. Daisy now has hard wood floors in her temperature controlled underground condo. It was not easy retrofitting a floor in four pieces into a hole in the ground, but the operation was a success. I left some gaps between the four plywood pieces that make up her new floor so that the humidity and "earthy" air can still circulate around in there. The gaps are only 1/2 -1" wide, so not enough space for her to dig anymore. I put some cypress mulch and coco chips down there for her to "burrow" into at night and feel more comfortable.

So the question was asked, "If you give a sulcata a manmade, underground, temperature controlled shelter and a great big pen, will they still dig?" The answer is: Yes. At least some of the time, they will."

 

[wellington]

Here is the link. See if this one works. Toms worked for me too. http://www.tortoiseforum.org/thread-28662-page-2.html

Heather and Tom, please be sure to keep us posted on what your findings are once you get things where you want them.
Not sure if either of you have room, but have you thought about adding plants to help hold the humidity?