# How often to clean enclosure/replace substrate?



## khanvict

For indoor, primarily non-aquatic, set-ups, how regular do you clean the enclosure and more importantly how often should you replace the substrate with fresh clean ones? Any tips on cleaning, maintenance?


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## terryo

Mine is a planted vivarium for a Cherry Head. I only spot clean (pick up poop), and change the water every day. Then when he goes out for the Summer, I take apart the whole viv and put new substrate and plants. So that would be only in the Spring that I do a complete change. During the Winter when he's inside I will add or take away a plant. In his hide I have long fiber moss and I change that every 4 or 5 weeks.


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## ChiKat

Great question, I'm eager to see what everyone says.
I got Nelson in August and changed his substrate in January when I moved him to a larger enclosure. I think it's due for another change.
I spot clean daily but he does pee an awful lot  
It does seem kind of silly to change DIRT so often (I use topsoil as a substrate- how dirty can dirt get? ) 
It seems like most people change the substrate every few months.


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## DeanS

Spot clean daily

Change out monthly (if it's not a planted environment)

Duh! I just basically reiterated what Terry said!


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## GBtortoises

When mine are indoors in the fall and for those that I keep awake all winter I change the substrate completely about every two months. I spot clean constantly.


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## goodsmeagol

My cages are only about 2 months old.
But the way I have them setup I use a some what different schedule.
The daily spot cleaning as I see it.
I have the food tiles on a shallow 1/4-1/2 inch deep substrate, for a few inches around it, and have been removing all of it two or three times a month. I find they do their business here 9/10 times as they eat. What I have been doing is removing, maybe a double hand scoop of substrate 2-3times a month, and pulling substrate down from the higher parts of the cage, and pouring more fresh stuff there to replace it.
Then in a another month or two I was going to go right down to the liner and do a 50 gallon soak of all the furniture.


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## Rhyno47

Spot clean. I replace sphagnum moss every few months though, it seems to wear out over time. I have cypress mulch in one enclosure I think I will replace that once a year. We'll see. Also spot cleaning is great for indoor plants if you catch my drift.


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## tortoisenerd

This really depends on the substrate...I use shredded aspen and spot clean daily, straighten up the cage furshings and level out the substrate and put the hay we use as a hide back all in a pile every few days, replace all the stuff near his burrow area monthly (I put in a fresh hay pile every 2 weeks or so), but probably don't do a complete change out really ever anymore. I'll take off the top layer and anywhere he digs down, but I have over 6 cubic feet of substrate in there so I don't see the point to do it if it isn't being soiled. My husband found a gross mess the other day. Trevor had a burrow that I didn't know about due to the angle of it, and where he was sitting in the burrow I knew about, the poop and pee would drop down to the burrow below it. Such a mess! No wonder I hadn't been finding poop lately. He was a sweetie and cleaned it all up. 

Oh, and I clean the water dish and food slate tile weekly with soap and water.

If the OP tells us what type of substrate/enclosure, I might have some tips. My big one is I have a dog food scoop (about $2 at Target) to scoop substrate, and I use paper grocery bags with handles which I actually set down in the enclosure on their sides and scoop substrate into them. Less mess this way for me as otherwise the aspen gets all over the floor. Usually I'll just have one bag for how much I change out, but when I did big change outs I'd put the few grocery bags in a large plastic garbage bag. My enclosure is hard to reach because the walls are 18 inches high and its set on a dining room buffet, so I actually stand on a chair if I do the substrate changing, but a lot of times my husband does it since he does the messy house work more so than me, and he seems to have a nose for when it needs to be done. It was a funny story on how he figured out we had a mess in the burrow...he said Trevor smelled bad. I guess he had been sitting in the stuff. Usually he doesn't smell bad at all. So, Trevor got a bath too.


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## Tom

Clean? Replace the substrate? Almost never. I soak all the indoor tortoises everyday and they poop everything out in there. So, since there is no poo or urates, I just stir up the substrate every couple of weeks. I clean up any leftover food and the water bowls daily. 

The only time I really replace the substrate is when I tear down an enclosure and set it back up for a new animal.


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