New leopard worries

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EKLC

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After a day on the nicely hydrated coir substrate, my little guy has been a lot more active. Took him outside and he was crawling all over the place and trying to eat every plant in sight. I don't think he likes chicory, and I ordered some salad hay from carolina pets.
 

onarock

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Badgemash, I know you wrote that you do not have time to examine every tipe of sand, but I wanted to ask you a question..Sorry. What do you know about coral sand its what we have available here in Hawaii. Its like 75 percent coral basically fish poop from parrot fish that eat the coral. When you come to Hawaii and lay in the sand........yep you guessed it.....fish poo
 

Badgemash

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onarock said:
Badgemash, I know you wrote that you do not have time to examine every tipe of sand, but I wanted to ask you a question..Sorry. What do you know about coral sand its what we have available here in Hawaii. Its like 75 percent coral basically fish poop from parrot fish that eat the coral. When you come to Hawaii and lay in the sand........yep you guessed it.....fish poo

The fish poo sand is going to be mostly carbonate (the bad kind), the corals also use it to build their skeletons much like mollusk shells. The black sand is ground up basalt flows from the eruptions that built the islands, chemically I doubt it's much of a problem, but on a microscopic level it can me very angular and sharp so I wouldn't use that.

I don't mind talking about sand on here (in fact I love talking about geology stuff to the point it makes Chris sigh in despair), I just meant that in my personal life I don't have the energy to analyze every sample I come across in a lab to make sure it's safe when other stuff works perfectly fine.

-Devon
 
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Maggie Cummings

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I certainly don't want to get in the middle of this "lively discussion" but I just wanted to say one thing...I had one young tortoise blinded by a coiled bulb and another one died, I knew his eyes had a problem but as yet the info on coiled bulbs was not released. So his eyes were swollen and half closed and he was still trying to eat and act normal and about the time I discovered Tony was blind this guy died. They were both kept together under a coiled bulb. I am an experienced keeper but like I said, the information that these coiled bulbs were causing stuff like this was not out on the Internet just yet. In retrospect I can see that the damage was caused by coiled bulbs and I will never keep another animal under a coiled bulb even after they decide the new bulbs are safe...

I belong to an on line group who keep Sulcata and Leopards and most of them use coir and sand as their substrate. They make a 50/50 mix and they feed their animals on a piece of slate or something like that. They don't feed their animals on the substrate where sand can get on the food and with this group impaction is not a problem. I don't like using sand as any part of a substrate, I use cypress mulch or find grade orchid bark.

I personally think your guys need a broader variety of food, I like to use Spring Mix as a base and add other stuff to it, like collards, endive, escarole, romaine, red and green leaf lettuces and whatever other dark leafy greens the produce section has to offer. But you are just feeding 2 things and that's not good. They need a wide variety of foods. Young or small tortoises don't like and won't eat hay. In my experience they should be older before trying to make them eat hay.

And they should be soaked daily...

OK so that was 4 things.
 
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