addyson123
Member
Hello everyone, first of all I hope you are all having a good day and staying safe.
So when I first got my russian tortoise on my 13th birthday, about a year ago, I did a lot of research and thought that the best option would be to buy a combo "Lighting Kit" like the one here. It came with the lamp that holds two compact bulbs, one uvb and one basking. This seemed like the right option as I had seen on many official looking websites and was told by the people at the pet store that I bought him at that it would work great. However, in the past few months I have discovered this forum and it has helped me a lot with a bunch of different issues that I have encountered. Well, after reading some of the posts here I have noticed that a lot of my set-up is not ideal for my tortoise. With that being said, I have a few questions.
I live in Oregon, so the weather hasn't been perfect to take him outside very often but I let him roam around my house some and in the summertime last year I would take him out to a small outdoor enclosure for a few hours to get some natural sunlight while I worked on school work on my porch and I plan to do this again as soon as the weather gets consistently dry. Right now he is and has been living in a 50 gallon aquarium that I have covered about halfway up the sides with wallpaper so he can't see out. I know that this isn't a great size and I do plan on getting a bigger enclosure, probably by making it myself. As of now it is filled with about 4 inches of damp coconut coir substrate that I dump water in and mix around every other day so that it stays damp. I feed him a mixture of food everyday, usually a bit of romaine and radicchio as well as a few weeds from my garden like dandelions and clovers. He has a cave that I made out of a wooden basket that I cut an entrance out of as well as a bendable wooden hide/bridge that he can go under of walk across. His lamp hangs above the right side of his enclosure directly above his basking slate and a patch of substrate that he likes to dig in.
I have heard that the compact florescent uvb bulb doesn't work well and can hurt tortoises' eyes so I would like to find a better option. I don't have a lid for my enclosure so ideally I would want to find a bulb that works in my mini lamp fixture but if that isn't possible, I can figure something else out. I also want to fix the basking lamp issue because I have had to replace it about every two months and I haven't had to replace the uvb bulb at all yet. This might just be how it works with those kind of bulbs, but do any of you have suggestions for better bulbs that could fit in the lamp fixture that I already have? I am also worried that his enclosure gets too cold at night as I have a large air conditioner near him, but it is facing away, and towards the other side of the room. What is your suggestion for nighttime heaters?
Okay, so with all of that information, I will post some pictures of him and can you tell me if he has any obvious issues based on his appearance? The people at the pet store I got him (which was a place in Newberg, OR called Critter Cabana) told me that he was about 2 years old at the time, which would make him nearly 3 now. I am also fairly certain that he is a male because his tail is very long and it curls to the side. He is 5 inches long and 4 inches wide, I'm not sure of his weight. He also has a few "battle scars" or chipped pieces off of his shell from when I first got him, which makes me think he could be wild caught and not bred like the store told me. Here are the pictures:
So when I first got my russian tortoise on my 13th birthday, about a year ago, I did a lot of research and thought that the best option would be to buy a combo "Lighting Kit" like the one here. It came with the lamp that holds two compact bulbs, one uvb and one basking. This seemed like the right option as I had seen on many official looking websites and was told by the people at the pet store that I bought him at that it would work great. However, in the past few months I have discovered this forum and it has helped me a lot with a bunch of different issues that I have encountered. Well, after reading some of the posts here I have noticed that a lot of my set-up is not ideal for my tortoise. With that being said, I have a few questions.
I live in Oregon, so the weather hasn't been perfect to take him outside very often but I let him roam around my house some and in the summertime last year I would take him out to a small outdoor enclosure for a few hours to get some natural sunlight while I worked on school work on my porch and I plan to do this again as soon as the weather gets consistently dry. Right now he is and has been living in a 50 gallon aquarium that I have covered about halfway up the sides with wallpaper so he can't see out. I know that this isn't a great size and I do plan on getting a bigger enclosure, probably by making it myself. As of now it is filled with about 4 inches of damp coconut coir substrate that I dump water in and mix around every other day so that it stays damp. I feed him a mixture of food everyday, usually a bit of romaine and radicchio as well as a few weeds from my garden like dandelions and clovers. He has a cave that I made out of a wooden basket that I cut an entrance out of as well as a bendable wooden hide/bridge that he can go under of walk across. His lamp hangs above the right side of his enclosure directly above his basking slate and a patch of substrate that he likes to dig in.
I have heard that the compact florescent uvb bulb doesn't work well and can hurt tortoises' eyes so I would like to find a better option. I don't have a lid for my enclosure so ideally I would want to find a bulb that works in my mini lamp fixture but if that isn't possible, I can figure something else out. I also want to fix the basking lamp issue because I have had to replace it about every two months and I haven't had to replace the uvb bulb at all yet. This might just be how it works with those kind of bulbs, but do any of you have suggestions for better bulbs that could fit in the lamp fixture that I already have? I am also worried that his enclosure gets too cold at night as I have a large air conditioner near him, but it is facing away, and towards the other side of the room. What is your suggestion for nighttime heaters?
Okay, so with all of that information, I will post some pictures of him and can you tell me if he has any obvious issues based on his appearance? The people at the pet store I got him (which was a place in Newberg, OR called Critter Cabana) told me that he was about 2 years old at the time, which would make him nearly 3 now. I am also fairly certain that he is a male because his tail is very long and it curls to the side. He is 5 inches long and 4 inches wide, I'm not sure of his weight. He also has a few "battle scars" or chipped pieces off of his shell from when I first got him, which makes me think he could be wild caught and not bred like the store told me. Here are the pictures: