Minority2

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My temps have never dropped below 80 ambient art at tort level and in hide. And since I covered it the humidity hadn't dropped below 80 either. So, I'm really lost.

If your temperature reader is accurate than there is nothing wrong with the level of care you provided. A well started hatchling incubated and raised in warm and humid environments will generally thrive under those conditions.

I'm hoping to hear from @TylerStewart so we can get a more in-depth explanation on his incubation and hatchling raising conditions so we can hopefully get better insight and possibly come up with a remedy to fix these issues with all breeders.
 

drew54

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I'm using a new temp gun with a new waterproof thermometer and hygrometer and they both are reading the same.
 

G-stars

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He is still at 57g. He lost 1g and then I weighed him after his first 30 min of soaking and he is back 57g. But that's what he was when I weighed him for the first time last Thursday.

How long have you had this tortoise?
 

wellington

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I think if this one doesn't pull thru, you should take Tyler up on his offer. He isn't going to guarantee the second one anyway, except live arrival, which is what I would guess anyone would do for a replacement tort. If you can get some mazuri torts food if you don't already use it, and try to get him to eat it, it might help. It seems to put size on, specially for those torts that don't seem to grow. Soak it in some water until it's very soft. One to two nuggets a day I would give until he starts doing better or putting some size on. Then you could cut back too a couple times a week. If you don't have any, let me know.
 

wellington

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If your temperature reader is accurate than there is nothing wrong with the level of care you provided. A well started hatchling incubated and raised in warm and humid environments will generally thrive under those conditions.

I'm hoping to hear from @TylerStewart so we can get a more in-depth explanation on his incubation and hatchling raising conditions so we can hopefully get better insight and possibly come up with a remedy to fix these issues with all breeders.
I think it's just a matter of some just don't thrive. Not sure if it has anything to do with anyone's care. Tyler doesn't use the closed chamber but does at least provide humidity so it's not the hot and dry which I think would be a problem.
 

drew54

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How do I get him to eat it? I've tried cutting his greens up small and have been trying to have feed him, but no luck.
 

wellington

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I am looking at your set up and feel the 10.0 UVB bulb may be too much. I am using a 5.0 UVB, as I don't feel baby torts need to be blasted by heavy UVB. Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. How many inches is it from your UVB bulb to the tortoise?
The 10.0 is fine. A lot of us use the mvb which is even more uvb and more intense and none is as good or intense as the sun. Only time any could be too much would be if they are placed too close. Most bulbs have a recommended distance on the package. I don't think any of them list less then 12 inches, but a one inch difference I don't think would be a big deal. I wouldn't go closer though.
 

Tom

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I emailed Tyler from tortoise supply and he wasn't too happy. He said my problem is the enclosed chamber and that they are death traps which is why he doesn't use them. I know I caused his dehydration because I didn't check floor temp that one night.

What I'm really confused about his that I've followed everyone's advice and care sheets and he was doing well and then suddenly after the high temp he immediately declined.

He said he would make an exception and replace with a new tort if I pay shipping, but there would be no guarantee if I kept it in a closed chamber.

I'm heartbroken and I don't know what to do.
This one is a dilemma for me and a tough subject to tackle. I suppose this conversation was inevitable...

Tyler and his lovely wife Sarah are terrific human beings and I love them both. They are friends. Tyler is an intelligent and experienced man. We've briefly talked about this subject a few times, but he has closed his mind to it, and hasn't been willing to reconsider it in our conversations. He can clearly see, just like everyone else here, that 1000's of people all over the world are having unanimous success using the closed chamber methods, so I don't know why he'd make a statement like that. He clearly did something wrong whenever he attempted it, and now he has closed his mind to it. Its not cool temps. I generally keep ambient temps at 80 or above, but I've had temps drop down to 63 during a power outage and repeatedly down to the low 70s when cold winter spells caught me off guard, and no respirtory infection, no sickness, no death, and no problems of any kind. So what in the heck did he do when he attempted to try a closed chamber? I certainly can't figure it out, but even he knows they aren't death chambers because he has seen mine personally on at least two occasions and anyone can click open hundreds of threads here and see the results for themselves. Tyler is the only person in the world that has actually tried it that I've come across saying this about closed chambers, and there are literally 1000's of other people saying the exact opposite. From China to Germany to South Africa and all over the USA. Nearly every experienced keeper here on TFO says the opposite of what Tyler says about closed chambers. I can't think of any exceptions.

I don't want to insult anyone or lose a friend over it, but he's wrong. Obviously wrong. Something went wrong with his attempt at a closed chamber and I don't know what because no one else anywhere in the world has ever had that problem. Whatever it was convinced him that closed chambers don't work. But they clearly do work for everyone else everywhere else. These tropical tortoise species (Stars, leopards, sulcatas, pancakes...) hatch into monsoon conditions in the wild. Using a closed chamber helps to simulate that and it is the most "natural" way it can be done. Dry, open topped enclosures simulate poor, barely survivable conditions for baby tortoises of tropical species, and that is why they grow at 1/3 the speed and pyramid.

I hope he'll join the conversation and explain his point of view. All I know is what has already been stated here. He tried it, and it didn't work for him. I don't know why it failed or what went wrong, but I'd love to figure out why his experience with closed chambers was so different than everyone else's.
 

Minority2

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Success rates for tortoises started in very humid conditions and raised in very humid enclosure to live past the first year are generally higher than dry started ones; this has been confirmed by many members in this forum, including myself, a previous dry housing owner of many moons ago.

My question is are we as members possibly hurting dry started tortoises by suggesting that they switch immediately to very humid enclosures at such a young age where they're not strong enough to withstand large changes?

Could our advice to do so possibly be too taxing for their lungs, the very lungs of which were started in dry conditions? Wouldn't the change irritate and be the cause of them being more susceptible to have illnesses?

Success percentages of tortoises living past the first year:
1. What are the success percentages of starting dry and raising dry? (open enclosure under 40% humidity)
2. What are the success percentages of starting dry and raising humid? (closed chamber above 80% humidity)
3. What are the success percentages of starting humid and raising dry? (open enclosure under 40% humidity)
4. What are the success percentages of starting humid and raising humid? (closed chamber above 80% humidity)

I'm hoping several long time breeders can help answer these questions.
 
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drew54

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With his eyes being closed most of the time, but they aren't sunken in or anything. Very bright, could I be over exposing him to uvb?
 

Tom

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I am looking at your set up and feel the 10.0 UVB bulb may be too much. I am using a 5.0 UVB, as I don't feel baby torts need to be blasted by heavy UVB. Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. How many inches is it from your UVB bulb to the tortoise?
10.0 T8 tubes put out very low levels of UV. I was getting a UVI reading of 1.1 from mine at a distance of about 10 inches. That is very low. In comparison, my Arcadia 12% HO bulbs Gave me a UVI of 6-7 at 22". This is very high and simulates mid day summer sun. The 5.0 bulbs produce almost no UV and are a waste of money in my opinion if UV is your goal. They make nice light for the enclosure though.
 
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Tom

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Success percentages of tortoises living past the first year:
1. What are the success percentages of starting dry and raising dry? (open enclosure under 40% humidity)
2. What are the success percentages of starting dry and raising humid? (closed chamber above 80% humidity)
3. What are the success percentages of starting humid and raising dry? (open enclosure under 40% humidity)
4. What are the success percentages of starting humid and raising humid? (closed chamber above 80% humidity)

I don't know that anyone can answer these. In every case I can think of, there are multiple variables, and the vast majority of cases are uncountable for each of your scenarios. Further, what do you consider success for the purposes of this discussion? @Markw84, @DeanS , me, and many others did the dry/dry routine for many years. None of mine ever died, but I certainly wouldn't call those results "success". I've done the dry/humid routine several times and had zero problems, except the ones that were hatched and started on perlite. Some of them had their intestinal tracts lined with perlite and died. Others in that group seem to have not ingested perlite, or they passed it, and they are fine to this day, six years later. I know of no one starting humid and then going dry. Maybe Tyler himself could answer that one. I think he has done that. As for humid/humid, I have had 100% success with all that I have hatched from all species and multiple generations now. Zero problems of any kind. Its simple, easy, works fantastically, and anyone can duplicate it anywhere in the world.
 

g4mobile

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10.0 T8 tubes put out very low levels of UV. I was getting a UVI reading of 1.1 from mine at a distance of about 10 inches. That is very low. In comparison, my Arcadia 12% HO bulbs Gove me a UVI of 6-7 at 22". This is very high and simulates mid day summer sun. The 5.0 bulbs produce almost no UV and are a waste of money in my opinion if UV is your goal. They make nice light for the enclosure though.
I appreciate the feedback Tom and need to check mine with a UVB meter. My baby is spending a few hours outside in natural sunlight each week, so I really don't need anything.

I'm using a T5 HO ReptiSun 5.0 UVB fluorescent.
 

TylerStewart

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I've only got a few minutes to post, but wanted to clarify a lot of things. I have never called closed chambers "death chambers" in person or in writing. I have never said closed chambers don't work. I have repeatedly said they are risky, and they absolutely are. Probably twice or three times a month I get an email from a customer that tells me they set their tortoise up in a closed chamber and after a few weeks was crashing. I ask for their temperatures, and they almost always say "room temperature on the cool end, up to 95 (or whatever) on the warm end." They don't understand enough what 70 degrees (give or take) will do to a sulcata, leopard, star or similar tortoise when the humidity is through the roof. You guys don't see this from my perspective shipping off a lot of tortoises to people that halfway read how to set up a closed chamber and then want me to help them when there's a problem. I'm so so so frustrated having people kill my babies because they didn't understand the fine print when setting up a closed chamber. In an open top enclosure, you can't overheat a tortoise (because the tortoise has the ability to get out of the heat).

This customer when he emailed me said exactly this (cut from his email):
"I noticed last Saturday his temp on the cool side and in humid hide was 104f. I adjusted the temps that morning and corrected everything. He wasn't active and he stopped eating."

So the way I read that is that the cool end is 104. That's what he said. If that was a typo, I didn't know that and don't know that now until something different was said in this thread. When someone tells me that the cool end of their enclosure was 104, and it's a closed chamber, that's one hell of a problem, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that. We have essentially zero problems and zero losses the way we raise babies here. We raise them the way that Richard Fife raised his, emphasizing the humid hide, and keeping moisture in the soil around it. The cold sensitive species have a mild heat source under or over that hide at night (it actually runs 24/7 keeping the hide in the 85 degree range). Sicknesses don't just show up out of nowhere. I have essentially zero "hatching failure syndrome" or whatever the term that was coined here is. If a tortoise can get out of the egg, it generally does fine after that. All the sulcatas we have here are several months old, we aren't still hatching sulcata babies in early October, most of them are from July. We raise babies every year in these conditions to become future breeders. We don't have a pyramided tortoise in our collection. I don't understand the urgency to pile every baby tortoise into an enclosed chamber which might mimic the conditions in the monsoon season in Africa for a month or two, but babies don't grow much in the first month or two in the wild, and then they are back to non-monsoon conditions for the next 10 months.
 
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TylerStewart

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I just saw in the other thread "poor Bones" this quote:

I noticed yesterday morning that the floor off his enclosure, well at his level on substrate, was registering 104 while the ambient temp midway up throughout the enclosure was registering 80-85. He had been very lethargic and hadn't eaten in two days. :( I had adjusted the thermostat and the basking bulb as it was registering 113. His poor head and skin had darkened and dry. I soak him twice everyday and today I soaked him for an hour and I will soak him more later. His eyes are bright and not sunken in so hopefully I caught it in time. I adjusted the thermostat again and I'm about to check it again. After his soak I rubbed his head and he apparently liked it a lot. I'm hoping he perks up more and starts eating again.

So there was a 113 degree temperature within the closed chamber with little ability to escape the closed chamber. Knowing it was cooked, I am still offering a replacement tortoise at no cost other than shipping. Why the breeder is questioned or blamed when this stuff happens is beyond me.

I don't know that anyone can answer these. In every case I can think of, there are multiple variables, and the vast majority of cases are uncountable for each of your scenarios. Further, what do you consider success for the purposes of this discussion? @Markw84, @DeanS , me, and many others did the dry/dry routine for many years. None of mine ever died, but I certainly wouldn't call those results "success". I've done the dry/humid routine several times and had zero problems, except the ones that were hatched and started on perlite. Some of them had their intestinal tracts lined with perlite and died. Others in that group seem to have not ingested perlite, or they passed it, and they are fine to this day, six years later. I know of no one starting humid and then going dry. Maybe Tyler himself could answer that one. I think he has done that. As for humid/humid, I have had 100% success with all that I have hatched from all species and multiple generations now. Zero problems of any kind. Its simple, easy, works fantastically, and anyone can duplicate it anywhere in the world.

I can't answer this one because I've never raised a tortoise in a dry condition. Ours are anything but dry; we just don't force ultra high humidity on them. There's no way to measure a long term success rate when 95% of them are shipped off within 6 months (from me or anyone else). In the ones I've kept, we have perfect results.

When I have set up humid chambers, it was too much babysitting for me, too much of a pain to have to guarantee the temps didn't creep down, so I just didn't bother. I didn't see the benefits of doing that over what I was doing anyways.
 
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