Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First, the really bad:

Calcium sand: It's coarse, it's not digestible, it can cause your dragon to over dose on calcium. Not to mention T-rex makes it in all sorts of strange colors, so not only do you have purple sand, you have a purple beardie too!

Lizard litter or whatever it is: That stuff that is clearly indigestable dispite claims from the company that it is. I think ESU makes it? Don't get it confused with the ESU Jungle lizard litter blend, which is basically a combination of dirt, sand, and some other stuff (more on that later).

repti bark or similar products: If your beardie ingests this it's most likely going to kill it. Enough said.

Pebbles or aquarium rocks: This is pretty much too obvious.

Now, for the good ones:

Play sand (or zoo med's repti sand, or similar non-calcium and non-silica based sands): Most people have good luck with this, although there is a risk of impaction. I think most impactions occur because either the dragon is fed on the sand, or it licks it too much. Sand can more easily impact babies, though many people still use it without problems (which is not recomended at all).

Repticarpet or similar indoor/outdoor carpets: This stuff seems good, but what most people don't realize (I didn't), is that though a dragon can't get impacted on carpet, you have to bleach the carpet every time the reptile soils it or else your dragon could fall victim to bacteria.

Bed-a-beast: Though it's digestable (so they say), you have to soak it in water to get it to expand to full size, and then you won't be able to get enough water out of it to maintain the low humidity that bearded dragons require.

ESU Jungle blend lizard litter or other soil based substrates: There hasn't been much research done on these yet, but I am led to believe that it would be easier to pass than sand. If so, the only problems are that it's dark in color, requiring more lights on the tank to get the kind of intensity beardies desire. It will also most likely hold moisture for a while too, but I think the heat lamp would take care of most of it. I would think these substrates would do better in combination with another substrate. A tank filled with sand on one side and soil on the other seems like a good idea. This substrate is also nice if you want to put plants in the enclosure, as you can plant them directly into it.

paper towels, newspaper, etc.: These work extremely well for baby dragons, the only downfall is that it doesn't look too great. Also, it doesn't work as well for adult dragons because of the lack of traction. This is the ideal quarantine substrate.

Okay, I know I'm forgetting some stuff, so if you come up with something I didn't talk about, give us your opinions on it. Also, if you disagree with something I have here, correct it.

you don't have to bleach cage carpet to get rid of bacteria

true, but it still takes more time and work than most other substrates.

some have been in use for over 3 years now, and during that time we have not had any problems with coccidia or bacteria (which we did with full sand) During that time I have probably has at least 2 dozen fecals checked on them and they all have been fine but for one that showed trace ameboas.

Time? it takes maybe 30 seconds to spot clean it with baby wipes if needed (most ours go on a folded papertowel in their enclosure) and I toss them all in the washer for 20 minutes and dryer for 10...... so thats 30 minutes while the dragons are bathing or swimming... or we just put down papertowels for the day if I am doing deep cleaning which is about once a month.

I think over all the years we have tried about anything there is to... even hay, grass sod, towels, sand, newspaper from rolls, shredded paper, hard packed sand.... nothing worked as well as the combo of carpet, sandbox and papertowel.... the dragons seem happy with it!

With the babies it has always been papertowels, I buy them by the 10 packs for $5, but I think next round we will try the shelf liner paper that others have recommended on her,.... a good idea

That little nice square you make for the dragons to poop on, lol God, don't I wish mine would poop on a little square like that. Mine like the hammocks which they bask on so they know I'll get right in to clean them up spoiled rotten.
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Mystical Dragons

Or you could be woken up at 7am by your dragon thumping and spacing in her cage to wake you up so you can clean out the poo they just had. My dragon does this to me every time...when she hasn't pooed, don't hear anything from her till I get up.

CheriS, what size tank is the one in the picture. I like your setup. Simple but yet elegant... ; )

75 gallon regular. It came from the guy that does a lot of shows around the country and he sells them for $1 a gallon. They are designed for reptiles so not heavy either, we love them, they are perfect for the dragons.

I had to bleach the carpet, because my dragon had coccidia and some other parasite while it's been on the carpet (can't remember the name, it started with an S though, and I think it went right away when treated). But parasites are different. It's much better to have the dragon on some sort of disposable substrate.

I do agree with you though, as right now my dragon is on a combo of 1/3 sand and 2/3 carpet. I just started experimenting today with the sand, and I plan to see over the course of about a week what he will do with it (if he prefers to sit in the sand area, or the carpet, etc.). If he prefers the sand to the carpet, I'll probably just switch him over to all sand. I was also thinking about the sand/soil combo and putting in a plant or something. The floor covering doesn't matter too much right now. It will be decided more once i get my taller tank so I can get some verticle branches (making more room for him to roam on the ground, since right now his branch has to sit horizontally and it takes up a lot of space).

I'm not sure, and I don't think I'll ever be completely decided on substrate. One thing I noticed, since the sand part of my tank is just a 10 pound bag of repti sand I had left over, is that the grains of repti sand are really tiny, it's like a fine powder. I wonder if that's better or worse than the standard sand grains?

later

How in the world did you get them trained to a paper towel? Mine go wherever they happen to be when they get the urge. Maybe it is because they are young.

They train us. Most dragons poop in the same spot everyday, so you just put pc. of paper towel there.
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TheClassyLizard

and as they grow, we change to 1/2 carpet and 1/2 paper. We keep decreasing the size of the paper until there is only a quarter folded one left. We keep their enclosures when first hatched to only one basking rock area. If one likes to poo on rock/cave, it is left there for the day..... usually, they really do not like their poo and move away from it. But the paper is removed as soon as they go if possible.

They learn on their own to go on the paper, we just keep reducing it's size

This works with almost all of them. We do have one girl that insists on going on her hammock, so I took that away til she learned to use the paper, then I put it back and so on til she stopped doing it. We also had one that started going in her sand box when that was added. I would remove the poo and put it on the paper... they are pretty smart about these things and get the idea. We still have mistakes, but for the most part they all use the paper most of the time.

They do make a brown indented paper that gives traction and a textured feel to the paper. You can find it at www.uline.com Chris

so the only downside to that is appearance (though it looks considerably better than newspaper).

I used sand for a long time and after you spot clean a few times the sand just looks dirty, smells dirty, and really is dirty. When you take out the brown paper and put in fresh paper every day or every other day instead of spot cleaning, it looks clean, smells clean, and is clean. To me, that is all that much better than sand just looking a bit more appealing to me when it is fresh and thats only really because the sand is more natural looking. Not to mention no dust or no 6 week sand swaps which used to be a day project of sucking out sand from all the enclosures and dumping it, then cleaning the enclosures, then replacing sand. I would stick with some type of paper before anything else. Just my opinion, but those are the reasons why.

Just a note, the water dries out of it in about 3 hours under the lights, humidity isn't an issue.
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Yep, agree. I've used it for a while now and have never had any problems with humidity. It dries quickly when spread out and under the lights.
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~Melissa~
1.3 Leopard geckos
1.0 Bearded dragon
1.0 Hog Island Boa
0.0.1 crested gecko
1.0 Ferret
0.1 Chinchilla
1.0 Chinese Praying Mantis

Melissas Menagerie

I am very pleased with using plastic table cloth. It provides enough traction for my dragon, especially now that I have been putting a layer or two of papertowel underneath (kept liquid waste seeping through little claw holes to the wood underneath). I spot clean whenever she goes on it and there is no lingering odor once spot cleaned. Every month or so I replace the tablecloth with a new sheet.