Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well, Salty and Sprinkles are really becoming part of the family and they seem to really enjoy my little girl googling over them at their tank...they come out as soon as they hear her...too cute! Anyway, just thought I'd share that the reptisand is SO SO much dustier than I remembered and I just couldn't bear seeing them covered from head to toe in that stuff and breathing it in day after day. Since attempts to find the bedding Doug suggested failed profusely, I finally ordered organic millet online...it's food grade so it should be clean and nice. Well I took out all that horrible dusty stuff and put the millet in tonight and my little ones are loving it! So is momma because I can finally stop worrying about the damage that dust was doing to them. Anyway, here are some updated pics of them and their enclosure. Have a great night all!!

I need to find good, clean millet!! I am housing my pair of mali's on screened playsand and its working well, but I think I would rather work with the millet because its lighter and they can actually snack on it too. The benefit of the play sand is I can easily sift fecal pellets and uneaten food quickly several times a week. I am not sure that can be done with the millet with the sifter I have. A buddy of mine housed his bearded dragons on one of those specialty reptile sands for awhile and complained about the dust just like you did. His red dragon which is actually quite colorful was a pale white LOL!! He switched it out to play sand as well. Those specialty reptile sands are just too fine IMO, and rather expensive. It seems most herpers are ALWAYS looking for that perfect substrate that looks nice, cleans well, is light, and not too expensive LOL!!

Continued success with your new pair!!
KevinM

Thanks Kevin!! I ordered my millet from Amazon and got a 25lb bag for $30 shipped. Not super cheap but it's enough to fill my 40gal tank two or three times at a reasonable depth and as long as it works for them, i don't mind the premium since I just have the one tank. It's sold as food for cooking not as bird seed so I feel good about it being clean and it was a bonus that it was organic. I have a standard sand sifter to clean the tank and I plan on experimenting with a pair of wire snips to see if i can either bend the wires enough to accommodate or snip every other wire in the mesh to make larger holes...Doug suggests putting a larger mesh over a cat litter scoop...may try that if the snips don't work=)

Have a great weekend!
Molly