Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Currently i've had my two 3-4 y/o geckos on sand. I was reading and found a bunch of different things about how sand could cause impaction if ingested, which i already knew. I saw something that reminded me i had a little bit of repti-sand somewhere in my house and when i read the bag it said that it was made of quartz which was better than sands with silica in them. I looked at the bag of sand i was using and it had a label on it that said "Warning! this sand contains respirable crystalline silica that is known to the state of California to cause cancer."

Does anyone know if this silica could be dangerous to them? The bag doesn't say play sand just that it's 30 mesh, cleaned, and graded Monterey beach sand. I compared the bit of repti-sand i had to the other sand and it looked finer grain than the other one. Should i change out the sand in the tank for a finer mesh, quartz based sand?

I bought the sand from the same local herp shop i bought the geckos from. The owner of the shop(whom i trust) said the two geckos had been together for a long time and said it was what he used in their tank, so they've been on sand for a long time.

This is a thread which could very easily turn into an arguement. The short and sweet answer is that sand CAN be used however there are much safer ways to go. I myself would recommend not using the sand. I have found that most sand will "clump" when wet which will indeed cause some type of impaction. Sometimes it will pass, sometimes it won't.

Jeff

i agree with jeff. i use to use calci sand and when i would mist my cages i found that the sand would get hard or clump. then i discovered kingsnake. i read many, many questions and comments about sand, and had a few questions of my own. i found that none of the good breeders use sand and that the calci sand may infact be more dangerous then the play sand or beach sand. my opinion has changed greatly about sand and i do not use it at all anymore. now the only substrate i use is paper towels. i also now have way to many geckos to spend money on that sand and i love my guys and galls to much to risk it.
also i hardly remember it but when i was A LOT younger i had a few baby leos who started out healthy. we kept them on sand and slowly they all stopped eating and died. i was to young to even think about this kind of stuff back then but now i think their death was probably due to impactation. PS a long long time ago....

i've been watching them eat and it seems they're both VERY careful to not get any sand in their mouth when they eat. I put a live waxworm in front of both of them and when they ate them they used the side of their mouth to pick them up and seemed to both be really cautious about the sand. i haven't watched this close up with crickets but i'm pretty sure its about the same deal. i feed the worms to them in a dish but to give them a taste to excite their appetite i put the first two right in front of them so they'd eat it.

i went to petsmart yesterday and got that zoo-med repti-sand. It's not calcium sand and is made from quartz instead of silica and doesn't seem to clump too bad.

if it seems to me they eat some sand along with the crickets i'll start feeding them in the 20gal aquarium in my living room that has cage carpet in it alreay. It just really like the way the sand looks especially since it's in my bedroom and i have to look at it alot.