Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi gang,
my order finally arrived. I am very disappointed, the hay I ordered wasnt bagged- it was just in the box, with one strip of packing tape holding the box closed...and after digging around in it, I found my bag of mazuri, and my bag of grass seed with a hole poked in it.
I soaked four pellets and they swelled to the same size as my baby sulcata. lol! At this rate, the one pound bag should last a year.
Well, my tortoise wouldnt eat it anyway, but I think it made for a nice mud-style bath for him to smoosh around in and get all dirty.
I have a question regarding UVB. I havent really been able to find any source that tells me HOW MUCH to use. I have a reptisun 10.0 and a reptisun 8.0 on during the day for him. Too much? Is there such a thing as 'too much'? I think I am paranoid that he wont get enough.
SO far he/she is doing well, very active, still soaking it daily, feeding well, etc etc etc. His shell still feels too soft for me however (but its only been about a week or two).

Brand new Reptisun tube = 10-14 uWatts/cm2 UVB
8" to 12" away from the tube at it's strongest point (center of tube).
And the UVB output drops drastically after as few as 3-4 months.

Normalville, Midwest USA = 160 uWatts/cm2 UVB
Averaged from, and including, dawn to dusk.
Obviously nowhere even close to the sulcata natural home range.

As long as a sulcata can handle 2 hours of the average natural UVB levels listed above (mine can and do), it's mathematically impossible to over-use the UVB from a Reptisun tube. Don't take this to mean that I don't feel they are necessary and serve a purpose. They are and do. I still use them when the weather around here doesn't cooperate (which is often). Those 10-14 uWatts/cm2 are a whole lot better than 0 uWatts/cm2.

I did not feed my sulcata Mazuri until he was 1 1/2 years old,
prior to that as a youngster he got a variety of foods all mixed
up. I chopped up green peppers, yellow peppers, escarole, endive
boston lettuces, collards, mustard greens, turnip greens, etc...
he especially liked zuchinni squash and yellow squash.

Their tastes will vary and change, mine now doesn't really care
for the squashes he loved as a baby, and will eat things he wouldn't
touch when he was small. The trick to "soaking" mazuri is that
you really don't. Just dip it in hot water for a few seconds.
Actually mine ate it dry most of the time, I'd just use the hot
water to wet it in the winter, and when he started taking big
mouthfuls, beyond the one pellet at a time bites. Currently he
is getting Mazuri maybe once every 10 days or less.

A good investment for you with a young sulcata would be some storage
containers to preserve greens and veggies, as you won't use much
of one and it can get wasteful. With a nice assortment of food,
kept in containers (I got nice tupperware ones for his christmas
gift a few years ago), it's easier to take some of different things
out and mix them. You can use pre-pakaged mixed salads or spring
mix if you want to, I did for a while, after mine was a few years
old, but these get very expensive when your sulcata gets big enough
to eat several pakages of it. Plus I find that they have a lot of
"filler" lettuce, and even iceberg in them. You don't want to feed
too much romaine at all, it pulls the calcium from their bodies,
and with yours having a soft shell, you don't need that.

Get some cuttlebone, the white calcium supplement for bird beaks
and scrape it onto his food to provide calcium at each feeding.
It's like $2 at a pet shop in the bird section, use a sharp knife
and scrape of a nice powdery layer of it.

Don't be surprised if you hatchling does not eat the hay, many
object to it as it is a coarse food, he might, he might not eat
it. You could try cutting it up into small bits and mixing it
into his food also, maybe mixed in with a little banana mush,
they can't resist that usually. Mine now eats pre-soaked and
drained hay readily. I use Kaytee brand, I've found it to be
the softest timothy hay available in stores. This from a tortoise
that tried eating around hay for years, now eats it like a cow.

As to your seeds, these grow very quickly and my tort liked eating
the product, just keep it drained or it'll mold, and you'll get
weird little flies out of nowhere. You'll find that even if you
plant these outside in the spring, they get eaten up so quickly it's not
really a long term feeding arangement, but it's worth it for you
to attempt. Plant your seeds in a dish and have holes punched into
the bottom for drainage, then set that dish inside another solid
one. Get a mister bottle (label WATER ONLY) to wet them.

Be careful with soaking your tort, water gets very cold quickly,
I'm not a big fan of soaking in the winter, I did mine only once
a week just to be on the safe side. I'd rather he be dusty than
sick. Teddy (my 70 # male sulcata) currently doesn't get soaked
as it's winter and he's outdoors 24/7/365. Albeit he has a wonderful
tortoise cottage, well heated and all, the undertaking of trying
to soak a animal too big to lift, in a non-existant container
(none will hold him, too big), with warm water and drying him
so he doesn't chill is just not feasable. He gets hosed off
as is reasonable, and in the summer he's a mud coated pony,
tearing up the yard in spots he's allowed to.

You may find using the mister (warm water) as I did on your tortoise
to be an option, I misted his head especially to keep it from getting
that dry/white look they tend to get in the winter.

As to lighting options, once I discovered the mercury lamps,
I wouldln't go back to tubes. The plus side is that they also
provide the heat so your tort has a natural desire to bask
under them. It's providing heat and UV.
Remember that without the UV, any calcium you provide (Herptivite
and Repti-cal, or cuttlebone) will not be converted to D3 essential
for shell health. And the UV without the calcium won't work
alone either.

good luck, niki

I went back a read your previous posts. Sounds like the tortoise
table will be fine for now,just make sure there's no way for him
to fall out, especially if he shoves the hay to a corner. As to
your substrate, I don't think bed-a-beast is suitable for a
sulcata nor the sand. It's touted for them, but sand is abrasive
(especially if he walks through his water then gets it stuck all
over himself) and there have been cases of impaction death (eating
so much sand that it blocks the intestines). The fancy sand they
sell is expensive and having calcium in the sand is a waste cause
they're not supposed to eat it and they don't absorb calcium
through their skin by walking on it. You'd be just as well off
with a $3 bag of playsand from Lowes.

I never left food in my torts enclosure, rather when it was time
to feed him, I removed him from the enclosure and put him in
a 4'X4' playpen with newspaper substrate and let him eat from there.
He had hay all the time, even if he didn't eat it (so he says, I
saw him with pieces sticking out of his mouth like he was smoking
much of the time!) there was not food in there all day to get
mixed into things. If you feel you need to leave something all
day leave a collard leaf (they can't get enough of this calcium
loaded leaf), yeah he'll be able to bite it.
A good "food dish" is a ceramic plant saucer, when he eats off
of that, it'll help keep his beak trim. I use paper plates
and just toss them, a big stack is cheap and there's no mess,
clean up just toss it, when I feed mazuri. When I feed mine
greens now, I just put the entire bunch or head on the grass
and he eats outside of his house.

The supplements - you can use the repti-cal in combination with
Herptivite, a match head amount sprinkled onto his food 3 X
a week, if he's not eating the cuttlebone pieces then scrape this
powder onto his food alternatively to the other stuff. There is
some danger to the purchased supplement, I think overdosing on
vit. A is possible, don't go overboard, use the amount equal to
a match head.

Best substrate in my opinion is Lizard Litter - the Kenaf plant
variety not any other, now available called : Life Mate, sold
for rabbits. It's 100 % kenaf plant, very light colored, I adored
it while mine was small. Now he's using aspen (that'd be fine
now too, but the other stuff is best). No other version of
lizard litter should be used (walnut shell, or bark stuff...).
Avoid rabbit pellets too.

See if you can get your cooler end to 72 degrees and keep your
food there if you choose to keep it in the cage, or at least
feed it there. Keep his water in that area too, make him walk
around to do things, bask/eat.