nortsmom
New Member
Hello! First of all, I've found all the resources on this forum incredibly helpful. I've already made the switch to getting our tortoise habitat fully enclosed after lots of reading on the forum specific to redfoots by installing a mini greenhouse cover over our 4x2x2 galvanized planter bed.
I'm hoping for some general advice on our enclosure -- specifically UV help and heating/humidity advice.
I got Nort about a month and a half ago (not sure on his age but vet guesses over a year and half at least). He's now finally starting to come out of his shell and hang out a little more and eat more excitedly than when we first got him. I think getting the humidity higher and lowering his overall temps has been a huge help. He likes to hang out but under some shade, so we're already planning to get more shady spots for him. We keep humidity around 80-85 during the day and it doesn't drop below 70 ever. We keep temps around 80-90 with some areas occasionally getting to like 92. At night, I turn off all lights and we still don't drop below 70 probably not even lower than 73/74.
Our substrate is peat moss and cypress mulch combined. He was not a fan of a higher cypress ratio and prefers the peat moss to burrow a bit while he sleeps. We use a fogger at a very low setting and can often turn it off entirely due to our closed chamber setup. My main concern is temperatures. We have two large UVB/UVA mercury bulbs. I've since read on these forums that these are not at all recommended which is a bummer as our vet recommended them (it kinda makes sense though as we stopped using these and focused on our regular heat lamp, he is more active in the enclosure and will actually bask a bit under that smaller light). We started with just a T5 uv light and the smaller basking bulb but the tube doesn't provide a ton of heat and I'm worried in our enclosure size it's too high up to actually get UV down to our tortoise (he's in a 4x2x2 and not sure exactly how high up the tube is mounted).
Pictures for reference. Thank you in advance everyone for your guidance.
I'm hoping for some general advice on our enclosure -- specifically UV help and heating/humidity advice.
I got Nort about a month and a half ago (not sure on his age but vet guesses over a year and half at least). He's now finally starting to come out of his shell and hang out a little more and eat more excitedly than when we first got him. I think getting the humidity higher and lowering his overall temps has been a huge help. He likes to hang out but under some shade, so we're already planning to get more shady spots for him. We keep humidity around 80-85 during the day and it doesn't drop below 70 ever. We keep temps around 80-90 with some areas occasionally getting to like 92. At night, I turn off all lights and we still don't drop below 70 probably not even lower than 73/74.
Our substrate is peat moss and cypress mulch combined. He was not a fan of a higher cypress ratio and prefers the peat moss to burrow a bit while he sleeps. We use a fogger at a very low setting and can often turn it off entirely due to our closed chamber setup. My main concern is temperatures. We have two large UVB/UVA mercury bulbs. I've since read on these forums that these are not at all recommended which is a bummer as our vet recommended them (it kinda makes sense though as we stopped using these and focused on our regular heat lamp, he is more active in the enclosure and will actually bask a bit under that smaller light). We started with just a T5 uv light and the smaller basking bulb but the tube doesn't provide a ton of heat and I'm worried in our enclosure size it's too high up to actually get UV down to our tortoise (he's in a 4x2x2 and not sure exactly how high up the tube is mounted).
Pictures for reference. Thank you in advance everyone for your guidance.
