Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, tonight I switched to sand. Shelf liner is OK... But it's annoying to have to sanitize every time I remove poop from it, and just unpractical for me, although I tolerated it. Since I have to go away to a conference from Thursday afternoon to late Sunday night, I'll be having some non-herp keepers babysitting. That's right, just regular old folks I know.

I left them some detailed caresheets (Detailed for what they need to know, anyways) for all my animals. All my animals are fed silkworms, so thankfully I won't have to worry about them feeding food that's too big. (None in the colony are what I'd consider too big) Anyways, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to go thru the trouble with cleaning, so I had to switch to sand. I'd say my leos are sub-adults. I adopted them from the Scales n' Tails shelter. They were seized from a very poor pet shop. When I adopted them in September, their age was about six months. So, that puts them at nine months now --- almost full adults. One has a regenerated tail, so it looks alot smaller due to a smaller tail, but they are known to be clutchmates, so they're pretty much the same age.

Anywhoo, to get to the point... The playsand here isn't exactly fine. It's ok for my beardie, who's bigger, once I screen it again. I heard of Reptisand being pretty much like playsand, but finer. And, I'll admit, after I screened it, it was VERY fine. (If anyone else is going to use it, please screen it --- the red kind, at least, has lots of pebbles. A smaller 5lb. white bag I bought to mix with it contained very little.) Has anyone else used this?

I feel somewhat confident... They licked around, of course, as it's the first time I've put them on a granular substrate. They stopped after a while, however. The only bad thing I've heard is that it's made out of finely ground quartz. Sand containing quartz is known in the state of California to cause birth defects/cancer/"reproductive harm". That set me off a bit... I read alot about how good Calcisand is for them --- however, I refuse to use that stuff with any of my animals.
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0.0.1 Bearded Dragon (Zeo)
0.2.0 Leopard Geckos (Vienna, Chomps)
1.0.0 Golden Retriever, Rocky, 10 years young

This is what I use. You can spot clean like snad and there is no risk of impaction.

I just stopped in a pet store today, thier leos were on play sand and you could see from the poop that they were consuming massive quantities.

It would be terrible to come home to impacted leos

-Alice

Any particulate substrate can impact. Some are more likely than others. If you want a good read, check out this article.

You may already know that a lot of what Ms. Kaplan writes about pertains to iguanas; just understand that our leos are much smaller with smaller internal organs and digestive tracts and you'll be pretty well informed.
Melissa Kaplan's Substrate Article

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Rob Jenkins
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I've actually read her article about substrates before. I agree that alfalfa pellets do mold rapidly if wetted. I do regular spot cleaning, however, so this is not a big problem for me.

My first leos were housed on the astro turf carpeting stuff (which is very abrasive, that's why I switched, and I'm surprised she doesn't mention this; additionally the edges frayed and my leos ran into trouble when try to catch crix at the edge), then I switched to reptibark and now to alfalfa pellets. I never had a problem with the reptibark although I've read that others have. I like alfalfa pellets better because they will break down and pass through if inadvertently ingested.

That said I've never witnessed any of my leos eat one or seen any evidence in their stools that they've ingested one in the 6 years they've been housed on them. I also have numerous friends who keep their leos on them without any problems.

I agree that paper towels are probably the most risk free, but I've never heard of any leos having problems on pellets (if you have please let me know what the circumstances were). I keep flat cork bark slabs in my tanks for my leos to hide under, they dig out the pellets underneath the portion over the UTH to reach their prefered temperature. They also facilitate spot cleaning.

If someone has their heart set on a granular substrate, I don't know of any that are safer. Mold is a problem only if spilled water dishes are left unaddressed and large amounts of poop is allowed to accumulate.

-Alice