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My russian is a little over 2 years old and has been on newspaper for mot of his life, and I just never liked it.
Too many problems for too little gain. Its dehydrating, gave no support for his legs (he slipps all over the place), looks like hell, etc.
And since I'm not adverse to a little more maintenance, I added the standard sand/bed-a-beast misture to his pen.

And now the dope is trying to EAT it!

I covered the sand with a layer of timothy hay to try to hide the sand. But he's still finding little corners here and there. I've been watching him all last night and this morning...trying to keep him from eating it...

I also added ANOTHER cuttlefish bone and dusted his food a little more than normal in case he's just looking for extra minerals.

What else can I do to try to keep him from eating it?
Or am I gonna have to trash the whole project?
He seems to love the new ground, but I'm really scared of impactions...

Last year I put him in a large outdoor enclosure. With a mostly natural soil substrate, but I also added some extra piles of sand here and there for extra drainage to to build up some of the ground levels.

I've never had a problem with him eating sand then...at least I don't think so...

Am I being overly worrysome?

I have two small leopards (4.5 and 5 inches) that I keep on newspaper.

They sometimes eat the newspaper, but it seems that if I feed them a little more, they quit eating the newspaper. I've taken newspaper eating as a sign that these slowly growing torts need more food.

I'm not sure if this applies to your russian. I've never seen my russians (including hatchlings) eating substrate, but I don't watch them that closely. But try giving him a little more food and see if that works.

Yeah, did that too...
I gave him a bunch of Mazuri this morning. He's sleeping it off right now.

But yeah, I'll throw in some extra greens too...

Thanks for the quick reply...

my redfoot is a substrate snacker as well, but only when it's new to him. from the beginning i kept him on bed-a-beast, and he tasted a good bit of it, but after a couple of days he tired of it. i don't think that bed-a-beast has very much chance of causing an impaction - junior just pooped it out. i read somewhere that the ground coconut husk is just harmless fiber.

i tried switching to cypress mulch (much cheaper!), but of course he went to eat it - the pieces were big and jagged enough that i felt that there was too much risk of injusy, so to this day i stick with the bed-a-beast.

because it's been an exceptionally dry winter here and i was worried about humidity, i got some organic spagnum moss for him to play in... and right off the bat he came at it full speed like it was a salad buffet and ate it. he just sleeps in it now, though.

i suppose that for them, tasting things is a way to check out the environment around them...

...its not just the coconut fiber...its the sand.

As it is, it looks like food amount was part of the problem. Apparently he gets hungry in the afternoon (normally I just feed him in the morning)...

I also bought more timothy hay to make a thicker layer.

When I first put my Russian on my 50/50 top soil and sand he ate it too, but he was really just tasting it, and after a few days he decided he didn't like it and doesn't eat it at all now. He also ate the hemp when it first went in (I think this is like aspen that you use in the States) - his enclosure is half hemp and half sand and soil with an area of rocks dividing them. But he gave up on hemp after a few days too. I have heard that eating a bit of sand won't hurt them and should pass straight through. My big worry is when he's outdoors he tries to eat as many small pebbles as he can find (and he has plenty of limestone flour and a cuttlefish bone in his enclosure). Theoretically they should pass through too, but I'm worried about impaction and so I try to remove them before he gets to them. Re feeding him more to stop him eating substrate, well, I'd be worried about the consequences of the extra food (pyramiding), as Russians are notorious over-eaters.

Nina

I proposed the idea of feed extra to stop eating the substrate.

My observation is that a tortoise's appetite shifts with the seasons, with the growth cycle, and with environmental parameters within the enclosure. If you fall behind the animal's needs, in my experience, the tortoise starts to look for other things to eat. Maybe substrate. With my indoor leopards, they started to eat the newspaper. When I increased their food intake a little, they stopped eating the newspaper. When they start to leave food behind, I cut back. They grow a little but do not develop shell problems.

With my outdoor russians, the substrate is basically grass, so if they eat that, who cares :->

I never recommended stuffing the torts with food. Of course, people will read and draw their own conclusions.

Point taken, Bradtort. But with my Russian, I don't find that giving extra food does more than distract him at that moment from eating something he shouldn't. As soon as he's finished the food he goes back to eating other things, and I think that some of this behaviour comes from curiosity. I do think that torts will test lots of different 'potential' food items, just to see what it's like. After a few goes, they realize that they don't really like it and go back to what they know best.

Nina