Hello from Hong Kong!

[Levendis]

Hello, I've kept a sulcata hatching for about a month. Here is what he looks like:

I suppose he could have an internet alias. For our purposes, let's call him "Chairman Mao".

Bio: Captive bred. Purchased 2011/8/26 when he was 6cm 48g. Has his papers. It's been a month and he's still 47-49g.

Here's my setup:

Temperatures:
Indoor ambient: 81'F; Basking spot: 99'F; Cool spot 81'F; Inside heated humid hide: 86'F; night time, 81'F throughout.
Humidity:
40-60% under basking spot; 70-80% elsewhere. (i.e. fairly wet due to substrate choice and humidifer set to turn on for 15 minutes six times a day)
Diet:
Fed once every two days. Meal consists of: Appetizer: dried timothy hay (grounded, a small pinch), a single 2mm pellet of Komodo commercial tortoise feed moistened. Entree: balcony grown bermuda grass (5 blades), a small cutting from the leaves of homegrown turnip & dandelion, bought mulberry, bought plantain. A tiny sprinkle of Calcium(+D3) and Nutribac. Dessert: Tiny cuttings from spineless cactus, succulents and homegrown alfafa used as occasional treats. Always hungry.
Space:
Glass tank 40"x18"x8"tall. Access to 6'x20' balcony in sunny afternoons. Rooftop garden if he were to get big.
UV and exercise:
Gets three hours outside on the balcony in the afternoon if the sun is out. The Chairman just loves it.
Heating:
One 60w ceramic heater over humid hide only used when cool spot falls below 80'F.
Sleep:
From 7pm to 7am. He also naps in the afternoon especially after his afternoon walk.
Soakings:
Infrequent, and if he gets one, for only two minutes. Likes warm (~105'F) water. Three water bowls in each corner of the tank. He doesn't seem to like water but doesn't mind it if the water bowl happens to be in his way.
Substrate:
Zoo med coco-noir (aka "EcoEarth"); sphagnum moss inside the humid hide.
Long term support:
Four qualified reptile vets within an hour's drive. I'm writing him into my will in the next update.

Digestion/waste problems - Not sure if I've seen any urates for sure yet. (Found a few specks of white solids on the substrate two weeks ago) He poops around 18 hours after he eats - perfect 4mm pellets but made up of green leaves/grasses very much undigested.
Psychological well being - Tends to walk endlessly along the side of the tank. It's been a month and he still seems bothered by the glass...very curious about his reflection and what's outside. Waiting for him to get used to it or I'm going to have to wall him up with wood. In anthropomorphic terms he prefers freedom and really wants to get out of the tank. I've been trying to make his jail cell more comfortable by changing temperatures etc...but he's not buying so far. Does not burrow, loves to climb climb climb. Topples over every other day, does not really try to right himself (even if I wait for a hour unlike my friend's leopards) unless he smells an incentive nearby (such as a fresh leaf).

I'm new to pets after a hiatus of thirty years...and I'm very keen to have the Chairman survive his first winter. Read as much as I could online and like this site very much - look forward to exchanging info further with all of you.

And no, not all of us eat tortoises!

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Levendis:

Welcome to the Tortoise Forum!!

Your tortoise is beautiful!

(Do we call you "Levendis?")

 

[dmarcus]

Hello and welcome to the forum...

You may have to put up the wood wall, as long as he can see there is more stuff beyond his enclosure he will try to get out.

 

[Levendis]

I forgot to mention that I wanted to thank Tom for his experiments and his way of publicizing the results. Sulcata keepers in Hong Kong are mostly advocating drier conditions...if the Chairman survivies the winter without pyramiding he would do a lot of good to the public health of desert tortoises around here.
I re-read my posts and saw that I said that I soak my tortoises 'infrequently' - by that I mean three times a week. (That seemed infrequent because during the last month I've been around him for hours every day...) It used to be once a day, but I noticed that after a few minutes in 2mm deep water he would start to get anxious and try hard to get out of the soaking tray, quite possibly to falling water temp). He gets a misting whenever I walk by him (ie 3-10 times a day).

 

[DesertGrandma]

The experts on this forum suggest soaking babies every day for at least 10 minutes. I notice you said you don't soak him.

 

[Turtle Guru]

Welcome to the forum

 

[TortBrain]

Neat setup? What's on the top right of your habitat??

 

[yagyujubei]

Everything looks great, but, If I were you, I would feed him much more, more often.

 

[ALDABRAMAN]

Welcome.

 

[l0velesly]

Gorgeous sulcata!

 

[drgnfly2265]

Hello and Welcome!

Beautiful little tort

 

[Yvonne G]

Neat setup? What's on the top right of your habitat??

A super duper pooper scooper???

 

[jjbird60]

That enclosure is awesome!!!

 

[Guggie]

Neat setup? What's on the top right of your habitat??

Pretty sure it's a web cam.

 

[Cloud 9]

welcome, nice setup and tort.

 

[chase thorn]

welcome!!

 

[Levendis]

Thank you all for taking the time to offer comments on the setup - I enjoy keeping the Chairman very much and certainly want to improve his well-being where possible.

I'm attaching a few more details of the enclosure because the photo in the first post is a little unclear:

Photo 1. The tank is placed on top of one of these trolleys that you could build from a home improvement store. The trolley allows me to push the whole unit outside to the balcony so he could be under direct sunlight and for UV-based germ control. In practice so far, I simply take the hatchling out on the balcony because he would have more space to roam. Height of the tank is set to be the same as human eye level when you sit on the sofa, allowing for excellent close-up viewing (experience from building model railways). We could watch each other for hours that way. There is a backdrop which seems to help with glass-anxiety although we are still experimenting. (Even the color of the backdrop matters, but more on that)

Photo 2. What's on the upper right hand corner? On top of the plastic cave (which for some odd reason the Chairman has never used) there is a scoop for removing wastes (which is recycled as fertilizer in the plastic planters you can see in the background). The small black device is the sensor of the exoterra humidity gauge (very inelegant design) and to the far right there is a cheap ($60) and sturdy pan-tilt webcam which allows me to see the tortoise wherever I go.

Photo 3. Humid hide made out of a plastic lunchbox. Inside the bottom is lined with sphagnum moss and a water-absorbent scotch-brite type dish washing cloth is velcroed to the top. It is not moist but wet inside. The Chairman walks inside and uses it as his bedroom about half the time, but he doesn't seem to use it as often as two weeks ago. I'm trying to find out whether or not it's because of i) the drop in ambient temp by about 2'F since two weeks ago, ii) that I only washed the moss once as opposed to three times, or iii) the ventilation holes that I drilled on the other side recently. I'm also still trying to find the optimum balance between creating a day-night temperature range and just keeping him way warmer.

Photo 4. The second humid hide (the plastic log). Dishwashing sponge attached to the top of the inside of the log, with a wire. My partner's leopards simply love this structure so she made one for the Chairman as well, but he hasn't napped in it at all. I've tried to put it in different locations inside the tank to see if it's a temperature / humidity thing but so far he only treats it as a tunnel. Still head-scratching here.

Photo 5. His fresh homegrown food supply. Two planters for bermuda turn out to be way too much grass, but I don't have the heart to replace one yet because it's growing so well. In the other two planters are turnip greens, alfafa (I'd meant to grow something else and mistook the latin name for something else!), a few dandelions (turned out to be difficult to grow here for some reason). Organic potting soil. The orange stick is some kind of organic fertilizer I'm using on the right side to see what the growth difference would be like.

Yvonne - thanks, you could call me Leo.

DMarcus - indeed, my partner and I have been debating about the wood wall for a long time. We are worried about potential mold problems with the wood when used with moist coco-noir, and of course spoiling the view currently in the sofa. Having a backdrop and pieces of wood on the outside of the glass helps somewhat, even though the human eye and presumably the sulcata can still see reflections from the inside. Still experimenting...what's interesting is that what I call 'glass-anxiety' is occasional - sometimes for hours he acts as if he understands the glass, but then later he would go through his window-wiping routine again (not good!) Seems worse in the corners of the tank (thus the waterbowl locations) and when he sees me around (he's much better with the glass when I'm using the webcam). But then even in the balcony where the walls are stone he likes to walk along the edge of the wall, sunshine or shade. Still observing and experimenting.

Joy - I put him into a plastic 'soak-tank' about once every two days. Used to be daily 15 minute soaks but he seems to get very anxious (panic-type movement, and trying very hard to scale the wall of the plastic soak tray) as soon as the water cools after one minute or so. So recently I've decided to cut down on the forced-soaking. For hydration, he already walks into the corner water tanks every ten minutes or so, and he's misted more than a few times a day as well. Has anyone here found a good solution to providing WARM water supply inside the tortoise tank/table yet?

Yagujubei - I think I'm in agreement with you and has been adding slightly more to his diet. I'm aware of the slow growth debate and have been very gradually increasing his servings given i) upcoming winter months, ii) exactly zero weight gain in a month, iii) his current lean nutrient food content, and iv) there seems so much undigested grasses in his poop. Having said that, I was thinking that I was just slightly on the light side - you sound like that you think I'm WAY under though - how much would you feed if you were in my shoes and what would you base your meal size on?

Again, many thanks for your feedback.