Soft wood chips for flooring substrate for Sulcata hide box?

[Shedon's mom]

Hi everyone, thanks to advice from many of you, Sheldon (young adult male Sulcata about 30 pounds) is now using a nice outdoors hide box we built him. Are soft wood chips (such as pine or cedar) ok for the bottom of the hide box, or do torts eat those? We need some dense substrate on the floor so he can easily climb onto 4" platform we have his Kane mat on (built the platform to try to keep hay off the mat) and would rather not use dirt, and hay as the only floor substrate is not dense enough to give him the height to reach the mat. I see that some folks use Cypress mulch for them, so thought wood chips would be similar.

 

[lilly_sand99]

So, from my understanding, pine and cedar are toxic to tortoises. And most other little critters... and even if they don't eat it, it is still toxic... at least from everything I have read and seen.

-Lilz

 

[Shedon's mom]

Thanks Lilz! What is the substrate on your flooring that I see in your member picture?

 

[lilly_sand99]

Thanks Lilz! What is the substrate on your flooring that I see in your member picture?

It's Cyprus mulch

 

[lilly_sand99]

Oh and peat moss, but I don't like the peat moss, I am going to switch to cococoir as soon as I get it from Amazon

 

[Shedon's mom]

Thanks, since we need a bigger quantity for a 4 x 4 box, I have been looking for cypress mulch at our landscaping stores, and none of them seem to carry that specific type of wood....instead they list things like "choice or select" mixed brown wood mulch so that is a mixture of wood products so it likely contains pine and cedar remnants etc. This is why I am getting confused. If certain woods are toxic, how do I find specifically cypress mulch?

And all of the wood mulch that box stores like Home Depot carry are dyed with these horrible toxic looking dyes, so I don't want those.

Plus, I went instead to buy top soil or mulch, and they all have these warning signs on the packages saying "pets should not be allowed to eat this" because they are organic and have animal waste products and who knows what else kind of garbage mixed in.

I hate to make such a simple thing so complicated, but these are the reasons that I reached out to the forum to see what safe products there are out there....Thanks for any further advice you can give!

 

[Shedon's mom]

Guess I have realized that I am just shopping in the wrong venue...I see now that some of the larger pet stores carry larger bags of Reptile Bark so I am going to go buy a couple of the big bags of that for his box, that way I will know it is safe for him. Thanks for hearing me out...

Coming this winter, we are in the process of building him a large heated garage runway, though, for days when he can not go outside and I guess we will just have to go with topsoil for such a large enclosure. I am assuming that those warning signs with the soil/compost are a bit of an overkill as a "CYA" (sorry to be crude).

 

[vladimir]

Guess I have realized that I am just shopping in the wrong venue...I see now that some of the larger pet stores carry larger bags of Reptile Bark so I am going to go buy a couple of the big bags of that for his box, that way I will know it is safe for him. Thanks for hearing me out...

Coming this winter, we are in the process of building him a large heated garage runway, though, for days when he can not go outside and I guess we will just have to go with topsoil for such a large enclosure. I am assuming that those warning signs with the soil/compost are a bit of an overkill as a "CYA" (sorry to be crude).

Just a heads up, PetSmart.com has reptibark in 24 qt bags for MUCH cheaper than in stores. You can buy online for like $13/bag and pick it up in the store rather than paying $30/bag at the normal PetSmart price

 

[Toddrickfl1]

Thanks, since we need a bigger quantity for a 4 x 4 box, I have been looking for cypress mulch at our landscaping stores, and none of them seem to carry that specific type of wood....instead they list things like "choice or select" mixed brown wood mulch so that is a mixture of wood products so it likely contains pine and cedar remnants etc. This is why I am getting confused. If certain woods are toxic, how do I find specifically cypress mulch?

And all of the wood mulch that box stores like Home Depot carry are dyed with these horrible toxic looking dyes, so I don't want those.

Plus, I went instead to buy top soil or mulch, and they all have these warning signs on the packages saying "pets should not be allowed to eat this" because they are organic and have animal waste products and who knows what else kind of garbage mixed in.

I hate to make such a simple thing so complicated, but these are the reasons that I reached out to the forum to see what safe products there are out there....Thanks for any further advice you can give!

You can get cypress mulch at home depot. It comes in a 2 cubic foot bag for $3

 

[Maro2Bear]

You can get cypress mulch at home depot. It comes in a 2 cubic foot bag for $3

Yep.....once i started using a lot of substrate for our Sullly’s enclosure - it was HD cypress mulch all the way.

I used some to make our Sullys ramp as well. Here she is sitting in the lets see whats happening todsy pose.