Posted by:
AlteredMind99
at Sun Oct 23 11:56:01 2005 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by AlteredMind99 ]
When picking a substrate for your beardie you have to consider a few things. 1) how old is the beardie going to be? 2) How much time do you have for cleaning?
If your beardie is under a year old then they should only be housed on paper towels, linelium, shelf liner or something else they cannot eat. Babies have bad aim, and tounge taste EVERYTHING, they will injest some of the material, and their intestines are too small to pass even small amounts of sand.
Adult beardies CAN be kept on washed/screened fine grain play sand, but its not the safest or easiest method out there. If you use sand, be aware that a risk of impaction is always present. Also, a big problem with sand is it harbors bacteria, when your beardie defecates, even if you scoop it up and the surrounding sand, some of the bacteria has already absorbed into the sand and seeded bacteria. Too safely house an animal on sand the entire tank must be completely cleaned and changed once weekly.
Some easier methods are using paper towels, which are cheap and quick to clean (just lay down new towels). Non Adhesive Shelf liner (my personal favorite) is very easy. You simply ask for shelf liner at your local walmart and pick a non adhesive kind that has minimal texture (some of them are very bumpy and hard to clean) and is cushiony. This can be laid across the bottom of the tank, a wet paper towel is enough to clean up any messes and the whole thing can be removed and cleaned as needed
----- 0.1 Bearded dragon (Hannabil)
0.1 mexican Black kingsnake (Morticia)
2.1 Leopard Gecko's (Pogo,Jeffrey Nothing, Louise)
0.0.1 Tokay Gecko
1.0 Blue Tongue Skink
0.0.1 Reverse Okeetee Corn (Autumn)
1.0 Blood Red Corn (Virus)
0.1 Bullmastiff (Asha)
4.1 Cats (Poe, Tucker, Abhid, Felicity, Emmy)
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