I still believe it is not a good thing to have a fragile baby poop 3 or 4 times a day. It is also my personal experience that tortoises drink in the first 10 or so minutes of the soaking. My operation here is a small one, nothing on the scope of what you have accomplished...
Just friendly discussion here. To anyone reading, Maggie is a friend and her and I can disagree and talk about it without hating each other.
Maggie, I quoted the above as a discussion point. "I still believe..." Why? Why do you still believe that? Have you tried it multiple ways and compared? Have you ever soaked babies for 6-8 hours a day and seen the results? Have you soaked daily for more than 10 minutes and encountered failure to thrive? What do you say to someone like me who soaks babies of all species for 40-60 minutes a day, feeds mostly weeds, leaves and grasses, and has 100% success with babies thriving, growing, reaching adulthood, and reproducing? Am I just lucky?
I base my assertions off of decades of doing all these things multiple ways. I've done the extremes in both directions and seen the results. I don't base my assertions on my feelings, I base them on real world results after much trial and error over many years.
If you are saying that soaking babies of any tortoise species for an hour a day is doing harm because of how much they poop, then you are going to have to explain why ALL of my babies survive and thrive and grow. Can they survive with less? Yes. Absolutely. Is less better for them? My results say no. Are there many other ways to do it that will result in a live tortoise? Of course! Survival is not my goal. I want them to thrive, and the methods I recommend are what I have found to make them thrive more than any of the other methods I've tried with side-by-side comparisons.