Hi everyone,
Just wanted to show you franks new vivarium that I built for him, it's 5' x3' x 2'. He's been in it since Thursday, he's started to settle down a bit since yesterday as the first couple of days he seemed to just want to get out as I think he wanted to go back to his old viv as it was familiar to him, but his old viv was 4' x 19” and was far too cramped for him. When I first got him he used to walk really slowly and I was a bit worried that that could be the first signs of MBD however within an hour of him been in his new viv I noticed he started walking a bit quicker and was more sure footed than before so it must have been simply because he couldn't stretch is legs properly before so it was good to see an improvement.
You might be interested in the substrate I'm using, it looks a bit like soil however it's a mixture of natural clay cat litter and kiln dried sand and when water is added it creates a substrate practically exactly the same as excavator clay apart form the colour, I can say this as I have used excavator clay in the past. It is a fraction of the cost though as it cost me about £15.00 for the amount you see and that is roughly the price of one small bag of excavator clay that would barely cover a few square feet. I came across the idea after a few hours of research, it was on a UK reptile forum and after reading the post I noticed it was from someone I knew, as it was the guy I used to buy crickets from online and I still deal with him now, so I knew it was a reliable source as he has given me good advice about other things in the past.
The exact type of cat litter he suggests to use is natural clay fullers earth, now fullers earth is not the brand name, I sent him an e-mail after reading it telling him I had come across this and he told me it's called fullers earth because someone used to clean up oil spills with it or something, can't remember exactly what he said lol. But any way so it could be found under many brand names but he says you should go for a bag that also says fullers earth on it, as it is bentonite clay. The mix he suggests is a 50/50 mix of this cat litter and whatever colour sand you want to use, that is by volume though not weight as the sand will be heavier than the litter. I chose a yellowy colour as that is similar to what colour they are on in the wild, and when added to the clay it looks very similar to what I've seen in pictures of Egyptian Uro's in the wild so I'm pleased that I found this. So there you go a nice little idea for you there lol.
As you can see in the pics he has dug himself a nice burrow, which he slept in last night, I will be getting about the same amount again at some point and I'll bank it up all down the back so he can burrow as much as he wants, I would have got that much in the first place but they only had 4 bags in stock.
Oh before I forget the large rock in the middle is something I made too, this was another idea off a forum, a guy did a viv using this method and I though it looked fantastic so I gave it a go with a hide. You make the shape you want out of foam, then cover it with a couple of layers of quick drying cement, then if you want to make a hide, turn it over and get a spoon and hollow it out and then cover the inside with cement, let it dry for a few hours, then give it a couple of coats of polyurethane varnish, and then one final coat but on this last coat put sand all over it and leave it for a day, and then the next day pick it up and brush off the excess, you will most likely find that you will have to give it a good dry scrub to get the loose stuff off. That is that basic idea, I must say though that he used pva and kitchen roll instead of cement, I tried this but it was taking ages to dry so I decided to use cement instead, and he used some two part epoxy he had left over from a car repair kit, I substituted this for the poly varnish as it is like a plastic coating when dry, so there’s another little idea for you lol.
Any way so yeah he's doing well although we are more or less back to square one with the tail whipping in the viv, I think he's just upset about been moved again, so I'll give him a week or two to settle in again and hopefully we can get back to where we were and go further with taming him.
Thanks for reading
Martin
