I found this interesting, this came from a Biologist studying Bleach. Thought I would pass it along.


Humans can detect the smell of bleach at concentrations of PPB - that is
"parts per BILLION" AND the bleach itself is not dangerous at these levels.

That said one must only rinse the enclosure until the odor of bleach is
non-detectable and the enclosure is safe to use. In many cases drying is
not even required as the specimen will benefit from the humidity. Bleach is
better at killing virus than many of the "quat-salts" or other commercial
sanitizers and is way more cost effective. Check that out. Cheaper and
better all in one product!

I use bleach.

Cheaper and better sounds good to me

great info!
are they saying that you do not need to rinse the bleach? that it will not harm the animal?

No. She is saying you only HAVE to rinse it out, until you can no longer smell the bleach.

I have always used the bleach method. I don't really care for the smell, but always mentally felt it did the best job. It may be safe as soon as I can't smell it...but I still rinse a couple more times...just to ease my paranoid mind.

thanks for the clarification...I too do the let it sit for 15 minutes to kill the germs, then the triple rinse

what???? use bleach??? are you sure? i've been using organic oil up until today to clean them. or i've seen in some reptile shops, they're selling the special tortoise lotion.

what is the special tortoise oil for?

This thread was about using bleach to clean your enclosures , not the torts.

That's right, we're talking about cleaning their enclosures!

As for the torts themselves, using a lotion on them (even if it's marketed for tortoises) is not a good idea! Just plain warm water is best if they really need to be cleaned, and they don't need any oil or lotion for shell maintenence.