Roll Out Rubber Mulch

Sixx_and_Rosie

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Hi guys! I need a few opinions on what I need to do here..

My red foot, Rosie, recently got a new indoor habitat for winter and/or when it rains so much that the yard floods. Its a hugeee wooden enclosure and originally I had lined the bottom with paper towels then poured cypress mulch over top. The point of this was so that when I decided to give the enclosure a thorough cleaning, I could simply roll the paper towels up with the mulch on top and throw it all away without having to scoop the old mulch out. I thought this would do perfectly, but I recently had to put her in for a few days due to heavy rain that flooded the yard and she tore the paper towels to bits :( I tried the same method with puppy pads but she made a mess of them again (from walking around and scooting the pads out of position). I am thinking of using rubber mulch as an underlay now, but I wanted to get a second opinion. I would use the roll-out rubber mulch so she had no way of ingesting pieces of it. I would just put the rubber mulch roll underneath her cypress mulch so that I could just roll it all up for cleaning.

Any thoughts?? I am looking at the Perm-A-Mulch USA-Made Environmentally Friendly Pathway from Walmart.
 

Yvonne G

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Actually, with a RF tortoise, you should have a much more moist substrate than would endure in paper towels. So that really wasn't such a good idea for the tortoise - maybe for you, but not the tortoise. Forget about ease of cleaning, etc, and think about what your tortoise needs. Use a substrate she can dig into, something like orchid bark, coco coir, even dirt from the garden. You don't need to clean the substrate but about once a year. Just pick out the poop and old food daily and stir up the substrate.
 

Sixx_and_Rosie

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Actually, with a RF tortoise, you should have a much more moist substrate than would endure in paper towels. So that really wasn't such a good idea for the tortoise - maybe for you, but not the tortoise. Forget about ease of cleaning, etc, and think about what your tortoise needs. Use a substrate she can dig into, something like orchid bark, coco coir, even dirt from the garden. You don't need to clean the substrate but about once a year. Just pick out the poop and old food daily and stir up the substrate.
Sorry for the misunderstanding - paper towels are just underneath the substrate I'm using. I have a mixture of cypress mulch and soil from my mothers garden on top of the paper towels, so the towels themselves are not being used as substrate. I am just wondering if there is any safety concerns with using a rubber mulch mat under her substrate.
 

daniellenc

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I don't think rubber mulch would hold humidity well and could help propagate bacterial growth. Just go with sphagnum and cypress, spot clean daily, and change out completely every few months. Also, if s/he ate rubber mulch impaction could be deadly.
 

Tom

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Sorry for the misunderstanding - paper towels are just underneath the substrate I'm using. I have a mixture of cypress mulch and soil from my mothers garden on top of the paper towels, so the towels themselves are not being used as substrate. I am just wondering if there is any safety concerns with using a rubber mulch mat under her substrate.

I don't think there was any misunderstanding. Paper towels under damp substrate will absorb water and be useless for your intended purpose within one minute of putting the substrate on top of them.

What all three of us are saying is that you don't need anything under your substrate. It takes a few minutes with a dust pan for me to remove old substrate from any of my enclosures. I just get a dust pan in one hand and a large trash can in the other and scoop away.

Also, the substrate doesn't need to be replaced if you spot clean. I have orchid bark that has been in use for almost 4 years in the same enclosure.

Hope this helps.
 
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