Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm so stoked, here's a plug for tile as substrate.
It's SO cheap,(43 cents cnd) and looks good. For those who don't want paper towel but also don't want sand compaction.
I'm going to have certain chunks still sand, where they don't eat or bask but the rest will be tile.

thanks for the great idea, i woulda never thought of using tile until i read it on this forum.

~Noella~

I''ve had mine on tile for about a month now. The only part that is sand is their bathroom. I got one question. Observe yours walking on the tile. Do they slip a little, mine do...
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lol we'll see tonight,they're soaking right now, i deliberately chose ones with some grit and patterns(mom wanted the one with the flower pattern . I hope they dont slip or my geckos will hate me.
About the poop mine poop on the sand too but i just put paper towel down, and they've learned to poop there and its way nicer to clean.

good luck

did you get a smooth shiny tile?...that would be the problem...if you get a dull tile they don't slip
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Christina

2.3 leos
-0.1 tangerine het rainwater albino w/jungle background (Blinkers)

-0.2 jungles (Vahz & Skissor)

-1.0 tremper albino (Spitfire)

-1.0 tangerine rainwater albino (Bronx)

Very good, but a few things:

1) Just cuz you're putting sand where you think they don't eat it, doesn't mean they won't eat it where it is. They ingest substrate when they hunt, but they will also lick it up as a source of calcium. You should already have a bowl of calcium powder in there, but l'il leo doesn't know the diff between a calcium bowl and sand. If you have sand in there, anywhere, your leo will inevitably ingest some.

2) Leos poop in the same place every time. Once you figure out where your leo likes to go, tile or no tile, you're gonna wanna put down paper towel in that area. Throwing out papertowel every couple of days is less of a pain then cleaning the tile.

Have fun,
Joel
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2.5 Leopard Geckos
0.1 Ball Python
0.1 Okeetee Corn Snake
1.0 Blair's Phase Gray Banded Kingsnake
0.0.2 Crested Geckos

no worries when mine feed they eat out of a dish and there is a dish of calcium i've had my gecko for 4 years now.
And their hides dont' have sand in them, they're either paper towel or ... well a paper roll

43 cents for how many sq inches/feet?
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0.1 "Tremper" looking Albino Leopard gecko (Lex)
0.0.1 normal ball python (felix)
1.1 Feral cats that we adopted (Fuzzy, and Bear)

the 43 cents was for one 8X8 inch tile. It was on special... but i doubt tiles can get far over $2.00 and you'd only really need like max 4 for a whole cage

i mean compared to a bag of sand/reptile carpet/etc way better!!

What a coincidence, i got tile today too I still dont have a gecko but i bought 3, 8 square inch tile for about 3 dollars . Now i have to buy a basking lamp and a heat pad. Do you all use heat pad ? Or is it okay with just a nice heating lamp ?

Mizar 21

i would suggest using a heat pad, leopards are naturally nocturnal. They need the heat for their bellies for proper digestion. I had my super-expensive-bloody-rip-off-reptile heat pad fall off(the glue came off) and my gecko started stuffing a LOT of fat into her tail, like it became HUGE compared to the rest of her. I'm using human heat pads now.

good luck

I thought about tile, but my tank is weird. It is 48 long and 12 in wide, so I guess 12 x 12 in tile would work (4 of them.)

Maybe I should look into that. Is it that much more better/manageable then paper towels?

I personally think tiles are better than paper towels. They are very easy to clean, and you can put paper towel in the potty area (if the potty area is sand). I think the biggest advantage to them is that they hold heat, which paper towels definitely don't do. Since they hold heat so well (especially ceramic and slate) you can get away with just a red heat lamp and no UTH. Of course with just a lamp you have to really monitor temps, but all you have to do to change the temp is move the lamp closer or farther away.
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Christina

2.3 leos
-0.1 tangerine het rainwater albino w/jungle background (Blinkers)

-0.2 jungles (Vahz & Skissor)

-1.0 tremper albino (Spitfire)

-1.0 tangerine rainwater albino (Bronx)

Crickets get stuck in it, I have to change it every other day, leos go under it, it doesn't hold heat, I just like slate a lot more....
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n/p
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Christina

2.3 leos
-0.1 tangerine het rainwater albino w/jungle background (Blinkers)

-0.2 jungles (Vahz & Skissor)

-1.0 tremper albino (Spitfire)

-1.0 tangerine rainwater albino (Bronx)

OK, more than 80% of my enclosure is now slate tile the other small portion is split in half. 50% is river rocks, and 50% is paper towel. I put some droppings on the paper towel and they use the same area. The temperature is exactly the same as when I used calci sand, but no worry of impaction. Also, my second female laid eggs the next morining after adding the tile. She laid in the moist hide.

Regards,

Terry
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Terry Brashear
1.0.0 High Yellow
0.1.0 Lavender
0.1.0 Hypo Carrot-tail
2 eggs incubating
http://www.naturepixels.com/gecko