The Best Way To Raise A Sulcata, Leopard, Or Star Tortoise

marktionson

New Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2020
Messages
4
Location (City and/or State)
Philippines
Hi Tom, I just got a yearling Leopard tortoise and just wanted to ask for your advice on a couple of things:

1. Have you got any experience with the high white kind? Any husbandry practices that can increase chances (e.g. Temp, Shorter exposure to sunlight, etc)?
2. I was also told Leopards get RI rather easily, hence need to keep constant 35 deg C upwards temp. I live in an area where temp ranges from 29-32 deg C. Does this mean I need to keep him in my indoor vivarium all the time?

Thank you!
 

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,264
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
Hi Tom, I just got a yearling Leopard tortoise and just wanted to ask for your advice on a couple of things:

1. Have you got any experience with the high white kind? Any husbandry practices that can increase chances (e.g. Temp, Shorter exposure to sunlight, etc)?
2. I was also told Leopards get RI rather easily, hence need to keep constant 35 deg C upwards temp. I live in an area where temp ranges from 29-32 deg C. Does this mean I need to keep him in my indoor vivarium all the time?

Thank you!
The high whites jut happen sometimes. I've not found any reason for it or way to control/influence it.

Night temperature should be no lower than 26-27C. Daytime ambient temps should climb to 30-33C. Basking area directly under the bulb should be around 36-37C. Babies should be housed mostly indoors in the warm humid temperatures described above. In suitable warm sunny weather, they should spend some time outdoors daily or a few times per week when possible. My general rule of thumb is one hour of outside time, in a safe enclosure, per inch of tortoise, followed by a warm soak when you bring them back in. Once your tortoise reaches 5-6 inches, it can live outside all day, weather permitting, and bring it in to sleep indoors at night. Once ut reaches about 8-10 inches, it can live outside full time with a heated night box like this:
 

Amhoffman

New Member
Joined
Dec 10, 2020
Messages
1
Location (City and/or State)
West Virginia
Am I able to buy an enclosed tortoise habitat like the one you suggest? If so, where would I find something like this?
 

Lea987!

New Member
Joined
Dec 13, 2020
Messages
8
Location (City and/or State)
San Antonio, Texas
I have a quick question.
I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species.

Babies hatch during the start of the rainy season. It is hot, very humid, rainy, and marshy in some areas. There are puddles and lush green growing food everywhere. In some areas there is a dry season, but the hot monsoon season is when babies hatch, and babies find humid microclimates to hide in during drier times. In extreme conditions they aestivate and don't eat or grow at all when its hot and dry. Keeping your hatchling in a dry, desert-like enclosure, is a big mistake and an invitation to disaster. It is also very un-natural for these animals. Damp substrate, a water bowl, and a humid hide should all be pre-requisites. Along with this, warm temps day and night are necessary. Sulcatas, leopards and stars are NOT prone to shell rot at all, and they do not get respiratory infections in these damp conditions as long as temps are kept up. I shoot for no lower than 80 degrees day or night year round, and all three of these heat loving species do well with a day time ambient approaching 90 degrees. Humidity is at 80+% all the time. Most people keep them too cool and too dry. Adults can tolerate colder temps and drier conditions in some circumstances, but this care sheet is for hatchlings and babies and is aimed at helping them thrive, not just survive. I know the books, the breeders and the "experts" all say the opposite of this. They are wrong. They've been wrong for 30 years. For 20 of those years I was wrong right along with them. Some of us have learned and advanced. Some have not. Keep this in mind when consulting a vet, or a potential breeder or seller that you want to buy from. As soon as they contradict this info and tell you "this is a desert species", you will know NOT to buy from them.

Some General Notes:
  • Set up your enclosure, run it, check it and make adjustments BEFORE you bring home a new tortoise. Babies are easy if the set up is correct. Babies aren't delicate or difficult. When babies are not started correctly is when people have problems with them. Babies have a smaller margin of error due to their smaller body mass, if you've made mistakes, or if the enclosure and equipment isn't already set up and at the right temperatures.
  • You won't find most of what you need to set up a tortoise at a pet store. What you will find is expensive stuff that is bad for your tortoise and lots of bad advice. This is true even at most reptile specialty places. Where to get tortoise supplies then? The hardware store or large department stores. There are a few exceptions like reptile thermostats, some reptile heating elements, and UV tubes. I get these from on-line sellers.
  • If you are going the the grocery store to buy tortoise food, you are feeding the wrong stuff. If you have no other choice but to use grocery store food due to your climate and weather for part of the year, it will need to be amended to make it more suitable as tortoise food. More on this later.
  • It is my hope that this care sheet finds you BEFORE you buy a tortoise. Most breeders start their babies too dry. The end result is stunting, pyramiding and sometimes death weeks or months later. Don't get a baby from someone who starts them dry, on dry substrate, outdoors all day, and doesn't soak daily.
  • Some common mistakes to avoid, with more explanation later: Buying from the wrong (dry) source, getting advice and products from a pet store, free roaming indoors or out, feeding a diet of mostly grocery store foods without amendments, not soaking daily, cool temps, wrong UV bulbs, wrong basking bulbs, letting dogs around your tortoise, small enclosures, open topped enclosures, sand or soil substrates, bad vet care or advice, too much outside time for little babies, keeping a pair of tortoises in the same enclosure...
Heating And Lighting:
I use a 45-65 watt incandescent flood bulb on a 12 hour timer and adjust the height of the fixture to get a basking area of around 95-100 directly under the bulb. In some closed chambers I go with lower wattage bulbs. This depends on many factors and no one can tell you exactly what wattage you will need in your enclosure. Let your thermometer be your guide. I use a ceramic heating element or a radiant heat panel set to 80 degrees on a reptile thermostat to maintain my ambient temperature in the enclosure. The basking lamp should raise the day time ambient temperature into the high 80s or low 90s. Ambient should be no lower than 80, but drifting up to 90 during the heat of the day is good. The thermostat will keep your CHE or RHP off during these times, but ready to click on after the basking lamp clicks off and the ambient temperature starts to drop at night. I use LED bulbs when I want to brighten up the whole enclosure and I run these on the same timer as the basking bulb. There are other ways to do some of this, but trial and error have shown time and time again, that the above is what works the best. Don't use "spot" bulbs, reptile specialty bulbs, halogen bulbs, any cfl, or mercury vapor bulbs. You want a plain old, regular incandescent flood bulb from the hardware store. I buy them in six or twelve packs, so I always have extras on hand. They always go out at the most inopportune times.

UV:
Tortoises need regular exposure to the right kind of UV rays in order to make vitamin D2 into D3 to be able to utilize dietary calcium. Real sunshine is best, but be careful. Shade should always be available as babies can overheat and die surprisingly quickly. If your tortoise can get some regular sunning time in a safe outdoor enclosure, even just a couple of times a week for most of the year, you don't need any artificial UV. Its okay if you have to skip two or three weeks of sunning time during a cold winter spell. If you live somewhere with long frozen winters, then some artificial UV might be in order for that time of year. I no longer recommend mercury vapor bulbs for several reasons, but florescent HO (High Output) UV tubes work very well according to my UV meter. CFL type UV bulbs are ineffective as UV sources and sometime burn reptile eyes. No type of compact florescent bulb should be used over a tortoise. Also get yourself a Solarmeter 6.5. Without a UV meter, you are guessing about the UV levels in your enclosure, no different than guessing the temperature without a thermometer. At least without a thermometer you can still feel the temperature with your hand. You can't feel UV levels. These meters pay for themselves in short order since you won't be replacing perfectly good working bulbs every six months, as the sellers recommend.

Too much outside time is bad for babies. It slows their growth tremendously and causes pyramiding. I've done many side-by-side experiments with clutch mates over the years to determine this fact. My general rule is an hour of access to sunshine per inch of tortoise. Once they reach around 5 inches, outside all day is fine, weather permitting, but soak daily and continue to let them sleep in their humid closed chamber every night until they get a bit bigger.

The Enclosure:
I have not been able to make any open topped enclosure work to my satisfaction. Low sided open topped enclosures like tortoise tables and sweater boxes are the worst. No amount of covering, or attempts to slow heat and humidity loss have worked well for me. There is just no way to keep the warm humid air where you want it. Closed chambers are the way to go. Maintaining whatever temperature and humidity you want is easy and efficient in a closed chamber. They use a lot less electricity because all of your heat and humidity is contained with nowhere to go. It also makes maintaining warm night temps a snap. Open tops allow all your warm humid air to escape up and into the room where your enclosure sits. Even if you cover most of the top, the heat lamps create a chimney effect and draw your heat and humidity up and out. Having the heat lamps outside, or on top of, the enclosure also lets the majority of the electrically generated heat you are creating float up up and away. A closed chamber contains all the heat and humidity. It works best if all the heating and lighting equipment is INSIDE the enclosure with the tortoise. Any other way is a compromise and less than ideal. Maintaining a small open topped box at 80 degrees with 80% humidity in a regular sized room that is 70 degrees and 20% humidity is VERY difficult, if not impossible in a practical sense. A closed chamber makes it easy.
Here are pictures of the plain basic closed chambers that I use to start babies:
View attachment 291552
View attachment 291554
You can make it much more fancy and add plants and decorations if you want. I'm going for simplicity and I spend time making their outdoor enclosures more fantastic. When done correctly, your baby will only be in this enclosure for a year or two, and then it will be time to move outside full time with a heated night box, or get much larger indoor accommodations if this is what your climate dictates.

What if you already bought a glass tank or wooden tortoise enclosure? How can you make that one work? You really can't. Covering the top and trying to contain the heat and humidity is better than nothing, but the sooner you resign yourself to buying or building the right kind of enclosure, the sooner you and your tortoise will reap the benefits. Almost everyone gets bad info from the breeder, pet store, vets, and all over the internet. I'm sorry this happens and sorry you bought all the wrong stuff, but it helps no one when a person keeps trying to jam that square peg into a round hole. Think it over, take a deep breath, and just go get the correct stuff now that you know. I encourage people to return the items to the pet shop and tell them why. Eventually they will learn and stop selling dangerous, bad, and useless items to people.

You need to know, and periodically adjust your temperatures. You need to regularly check warm side, cool side, basking spot and night temps, and adjust as needed. Every enclosure is different and they even change with the seasons in most households. It is not enough to screw a bulb in and walk away. Check those temps, and make adjustments, preferably BEFORE the baby even comes home. I like to use an infrared temp gun AND digital thermometers for this purpose. Check your temps early and often.

Enclosure Size:
Simply put: The bigger the better. I start babies in a 30x48 inch closed chamber. As a minimum, I would suggest no smaller than 36"x18" for a tiny hatchling, but you'll need to upgrade quickly. They need room to roam around. Once you put in the food and water bowls, the humid hide, and any decorations or potted plants, there is hardly any room left over to walk. Tortoises do not tend to do as well as some other types of reptiles when stuffed into small enclosures. They need room to roam inside their safe heated enclosures, and the floor is not a safe option. Don't think that you'll use a smaller enclosure, and just let Sheldon out to roam the floor for some exercise. This almost always ends in disaster. Its bad for your tortoise and impaction, sickness, injury, or death is the usual result. "But, but, but... I make it safe and supervise closely..." says every person until the day that disaster eventually strikes and they realize they were wrong. Its a terrible sickening feeling to hold a dead tortoise in your hand. Don't put yourself through this. Make a large enclosure. Don't have room for a large enclosure? Get a different pet that can live in a smaller enclosure that you have room for. Tortoises aren't good pets for everyone. For a sulcata, even 4x8' is only going to last a year or two. You might get three years with it for a star, leopard or slower growing sulcata, but that is optimistic. Outdoor enclosures can be even larger. Babies will NOT get lost or overwhelmed in 10x10 foot enclosure. In the wild they roam far greater distances than that.

Humid Hide Boxes:
This offers the tortoise a more humid place to retreat to and sleep and can simulate some of the more damp micro-climates they might utilize in the wild. It is as simple as getting a $2 black dishwashing tub from Walmart, flipping it upside down and cutting out a small door hole. I keep the substrate under the tub more damp than the surrounding substrate and it works great. You can also use plastic shoe boxes. Sphagnum moss is unnecessary and potentially dangerous since they eat it, and it can cause an impaction. The humid hide is a very important detail that should not be overlooked. Half logs and flower pots on their sides do not work. They are not closed in enough.

Substrate:
There are only three viable options. Coco coir, orchid bark, and cypress mulch. All of these can be purchased in bulk at most hardware or garden center stores at a tremendous savings. I don't like coco coir for these species because its too messy. I don't like cypress mulch because the pieces aren't uniform, some pieces are too big or too sharp, and because it smells like the swamp that is came from. If these two are all you can find, then go ahead and use them. They are safe and suitable. Fine grade orchid bark works the best. Its cheap, easy, holds moisture well, doesn't stink, easy to clean, easy for babies to walk on, not an ingestion hazard, etc... I recommend against any store bought soil, "Pets At Home" reptile bedding with the little white limestone bits in it, wood shavings or chips, ground walnut shell, corn cob bedding, rabbit pellets, compressed grass pellet bedding, newspaper pellets, hay, cedar, or any amount of sand. None of those are safe or suitable for an indoor tortoise enclosure.

Water Dishes:
Plain old terra cotta plant saucers work best. They come in a variety of sizes to suit any size tortoise, they offer good traction to little wet tortoise feet, they have low sides, they are cheap so you can buy extras, and they are shallow so your tortoise won't drown if it happens to flip over and land upside down in the water bowl. Sink the bowl into the substrate for best results. I prefer to give babies two water bowls. Do NOT use the typical ramped pet store bowls. These are great for snakes and lizards, but they can literally be death traps for tortoises. Clean your terra cotta saucer as often as needed. The more they track food and substrate into it, and the more they poop in it, the better. This means they are comfortable using their bowl, and that is great news. Just rinse and refill as many times a day as you need to. A water bowl that stays clean and untouched all day is a water bowl that is not being used for one reason or another. This is a bad sign, and it means your tortoise is one step closer to dehydration.

Soaking:
I recommend ALL hatchlings of ALL species be soaked in 85-95 degree water for at least 20-30 minutes every day. I use a tall sided opaque tub and keep the water depth about a third to half way up the body. If you have a humid enclosure with a humid hide and a water bowl, it is totally fine to skip a day here and there. Soaking only once a week and using a dry enclosure is not enough in my opinion, and I would not buy a hatchling that had been started that way. Once the tortoise gets to about 100 grams, I start skipping a day now and then. I gradually taper it down as they gain size. How often I soak older tortoises depends on a lot of factors, the current weather and season being two big ones. I soak more often when its hot and dry. If you live in a warm, humid, rainy climate, and your tortoise is exposed to these conditions, soaking less often is probably fine, but it still wont hurt anything to do it. You cannot soak too much or for too long. Soaking does not do any harm whatsoever. It doesn't make them poop too much and not digest their food, it doesn't upset their "water balance", whatever that is, it doesn't give them shell rot or respiratory infections, and it is NOT unnatural in any way. "But, but, but... Who soaks them every day in nature???" These babies hatch at the start of the RAINY season in the wild. Its raining on them frequently, and puddles form all over the place. Keep the soak water warm for the entire soak. If you are in a hurry, 10 minutes is enough. If you are forgetful or get distracted, an hour will do no harm.

Feeding:
So much contradictory info on this subject. Its simple. What do they eat in the wild. Grass, weeds, leaves, flowers, and succulents. Feed them a huge variety of these things, and you'll have a healthy tortoise. All of these species are very adaptable when it comes to diet and there is a very large margin of error, and many ways to do it right. What if you don't have this sort of "natural" tortoise food available for part of each year because you are in the snow? You will have no choice but to buy grocery store food. What's wrong with grocery store food? It tends to lack fiber, some items are low in calcium or have a poor calcium to phosphorous ratio, and some items have deleterious compounds in them. All of these short comings can be improved with some simple supplementation and amendments. A pinch of calcium two times per week will help fix that problem. You can also leave cuttle bone in the enclosure, so your tortoise can self-regulate its own calcium intake. What about fiber? Soaked horse hay pellets, soaked ZooMed Grassland pellets, Mazuri tortoise chow, "Salad style", "Herbal Hay" both from @TylerStewart and his lovely wife Sarah at Tortoisesupply.com, or many of the dried plants and leaves available from Will @Kapidolo Farms. If you must use grocery store foods, favor endive and escarole as your main staples. Add in arugula, cilantro, kale, collard, mustard and turnip greens, squash leaves, spring mix, romaine, green or red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, water cress, carrot tops, celery tops, bok choy, and whatever other greens you can find. If you mix in some of the aforementioned amendments, these grocery store foods will offer plenty of variety and fiber and be able to meet your tortoises nutritional needs just fine. I find it preferable to grab a few grapevine or mulberry leaves, or a handful of mallow and clover, or some broadleaf plantain leaves and some grass, but with the right additions, grocery store stuff is fine too. Grow your own stuff, or find it around you when possible. Tyler and Sarah also sell a fantastic Testudo seed mix that is great for ALL tortoise species and also super easy to grow in pots, trays, raised garden beds, or in outdoor tortoise enclosures. When that isn't possible, add a wide variety of good stuff to your grocery store greens to make them better.

Supplements:
I recommend you keep cuttle bone available all the time. Some never use it and some munch on it regularly. Some of mine will go months without touching it, and then suddenly eat the whole thing in a day or two. Sulcatas and leopards grow a lot. This requires a tremendous amount of calcium assimilation over time. A great diet is paramount, but it is still a good idea to give them some extra calcium regularly. I use a tiny pinch of RepCal or ZooMed plain old calcium carbonate twice a week. Much discussion has been given to whether or not they need D3 in their calcium supplement. Personally, I don't think it matters. Every tortoise should be getting adequate UV exposure one way or another, so they should be able to make their own D3. I also like to use a mineral supplement. "MinerAll" is my current brand of choice. It seems to help those tortoises that like to swallow pebbles and rocks. It is speculated that some tortoise eat rocks or substrate due to a mineral deficiency or imbalance. Whatever the reason, "MinerAll" seems to stop it or prevent it. Finally, I like to use a reptile vitamin supplement once a week, to round out any hidden deficiencies that may be in my diet over the course of a year.

Outdoor Enclosures:
This is a MUST in my opinion. Tortoises are solar powered, need lots of walking room, and benefit greatly from some time in the great outdoors. With hatchlings I start with short excursions of only an hour a day, followed by a soak on the way in. As they gain size, I like to leave them out longer and longer each day, weather permitting, until they eventually live outside full time with a heated night box of some sort, where climate allows. Outside time must be done with great care as there are many dangers. They can overheat, be eaten or mauled, or escape. Here is one simple idea. A large kiddie pool or horse watering trough could also work. If you don't have a suitable grassy area, you can put a plywood bottom on this with wheels and legs, and move it around. Do NOT let your baby roam free outside. You will lose it eventually, and you'll be unable to explain how it happened so fast when you were watching so carefully. Its a sickening feeling. Don't put yourself through this. Use an enclosure and make it large. Also, if you have a dog, or people who come to visit bring a dog, your tortoise is in grave danger. Be careful. EVERY dog will chew up a tortoise. It doesn't matter how nice and loving a dog it is. Tortoises are seen as chew toys by dogs. Don't let this happen to your tortoise. Physically prevent it with fencing and/or correct housing. Don't leave it to chance. It is a horrible sickening feeling holding a mauled tortoise in your hands. Don't put yourself through this.
View attachment 291555

Pyramiding:
This is the subject of many threads in itself. I will simply state here what I know to be true based on my experience, my experiments, conversations with people who live other countries and study tortoises, people who have kept them for decades here in the U.S., and personal observations of thousands of tortoises in all manners of keeping styles.

There are many things listed as causes of pyramiding. I can refute each one with multiple examples. Lack of UV, lack of calcium, too much protein, too much food, the wrong foods, fast growth, wrong temperatures, small enclosures, not enough exercise, indoor housing, etc. None of these factors CAUSES pyramiding. They can all be somehow related to it, but they don't cause it. Simply put: Pyramiding is caused by growth in conditions that are too dry. This is true for any species of tortoise, even the ones that don't typically pyramid. To prevent pyramiding I use a closed chamber and keep the ambient temperature 80 or higher all the time, I keep humidity at 80% or higher, I offer a humid hide that holds 95-100% humidity, I soak daily to ensure good hydration, and I spray the carapace with plain water several times a day. Sulcatas hatch during the African rainy season. It is hot, humid, rainy and marshy. It makes no sense to keep them in a dry box, with dry substrate, and a hot desiccating bulb overhead. Simulating this rainy season has grown me hundreds of smooth leopard and sulcata babies, as well as a few other species too. There are literally thousands of examples of other people succeeding using the same basic philosophy here on this forum. So please, don't keep sulcatas and leopards in desert-style enclosures. It is not healthy for them. They are not the least bit prone to shell rot, like some other species are, and they DO NOT get respiratory infections from high humidity as long as temps are 80 or higher everywhere in the enclosure, day and night. I don't say these things and come up with these assertions lightly. Its not that I raised one tortoise this way, and everything went okay. I have literally raised hundreds of tortoises of multiple species this way and had nothing but success. My methods and success rate have been repeated by thousands of tortoise keepers all over the globe. We have more than 10 years of living healthy examples to back up these assertions.

If you want to prevent pyramiding, simply do the above stuff.
View attachment 291556
View attachment 291557
View attachment 291558

Questions and conversation are welcome. The goal here is to help people to have happy, healthy, long lived tortoises and avoid some common mistakes.

What would a good setup be for a singular sulcata tortoise?
Do you have an example of an enclosure for a single baby tortoise?
 

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,264
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
I have a quick question.


What would a good setup be for a singular sulcata tortoise?
Do you have an example of an enclosure for a single baby tortoise?
I recommend a minimum of 2x4 feet for a single baby. This will be outgrown in a few months time, so might as well go bigger. I rely on 4x8 enclosures to get them up to 8-10 inches and ready to move outside with a heated night box full time.

@Markw84 makes fantastic enclosures that are priced well, designed and made perfectly for tortoises, and include all the needed equipment. You can buy a single enclosure to start with, and then add a second one to double the floor space as the tortoise grows. Its an excellent way to go. Contact Mark with a "conversation" for more info.
 

Lea987!

New Member
Joined
Dec 13, 2020
Messages
8
Location (City and/or State)
San Antonio, Texas
I recommend a minimum of 2x4 feet for a single baby. This will be outgrown in a few months time, so might as well go bigger. I rely on 4x8 enclosures to get them up to 8-10 inches and ready to move outside with a heated night box full time.

@Markw84 makes fantastic enclosures that are priced well, designed and made perfectly for tortoises, and include all the needed equipment. You can buy a single enclosure to start with, and then add a second one to double the floor space as the tortoise grows. Its an excellent way to go. Contact Mark with a "conversation" for more info.
Thank you so much for all the help you provide within the community!
 

handyw

New Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2020
Messages
15
Location (City and/or State)
Indonesia
yo tom,im currently using coco coir and third of coco husk,u mention that the best is orchid bark,but i cant found it in my country,is it okay using forest bark?or pine bark? or other type of wood?1610040493726.png1610040521438.png
 

EddieT

New Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2020
Messages
7
Location (City and/or State)
BERNALILLO
I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species.

Babies hatch during the start of the rainy season. It is hot, very humid, rainy, and marshy in some areas. There are puddles and lush green growing food everywhere. In some areas there is a dry season, but the hot monsoon season is when babies hatch, and babies find humid microclimates to hide in during drier times. In extreme conditions they aestivate and don't eat or grow at all when its hot and dry. Keeping your hatchling in a dry, desert-like enclosure, is a big mistake and an invitation to disaster. It is also very un-natural for these animals. Damp substrate, a water bowl, and a humid hide should all be pre-requisites. Along with this, warm temps day and night are necessary. Sulcatas, leopards and stars are NOT prone to shell rot at all, and they do not get respiratory infections in these damp conditions as long as temps are kept up. I shoot for no lower than 80 degrees day or night year round, and all three of these heat loving species do well with a day time ambient approaching 90 degrees. Humidity is at 80+% all the time. Most people keep them too cool and too dry. Adults can tolerate colder temps and drier conditions in some circumstances, but this care sheet is for hatchlings and babies and is aimed at helping them thrive, not just survive. I know the books, the breeders and the "experts" all say the opposite of this. They are wrong. They've been wrong for 30 years. For 20 of those years I was wrong right along with them. Some of us have learned and advanced. Some have not. Keep this in mind when consulting a vet, or a potential breeder or seller that you want to buy from. As soon as they contradict this info and tell you "this is a desert species", you will know NOT to buy from them.

Some General Notes:
  • Set up your enclosure, run it, check it and make adjustments BEFORE you bring home a new tortoise. Babies are easy if the set up is correct. Babies aren't delicate or difficult. When babies are not started correctly is when people have problems with them. Babies have a smaller margin of error due to their smaller body mass, if you've made mistakes, or if the enclosure and equipment isn't already set up and at the right temperatures.
  • You won't find most of what you need to set up a tortoise at a pet store. What you will find is expensive stuff that is bad for your tortoise and lots of bad advice. This is true even at most reptile specialty places. Where to get tortoise supplies then? The hardware store or large department stores. There are a few exceptions like reptile thermostats, some reptile heating elements, and UV tubes. I get these from on-line sellers.
  • If you are going the the grocery store to buy tortoise food, you are feeding the wrong stuff. If you have no other choice but to use grocery store food due to your climate and weather for part of the year, it will need to be amended to make it more suitable as tortoise food. More on this later.
  • It is my hope that this care sheet finds you BEFORE you buy a tortoise. Most breeders start their babies too dry. The end result is stunting, pyramiding and sometimes death weeks or months later. Don't get a baby from someone who starts them dry, on dry substrate, outdoors all day, and doesn't soak daily.
  • Some common mistakes to avoid, with more explanation later: Buying from the wrong (dry) source, getting advice and products from a pet store, free roaming indoors or out, feeding a diet of mostly grocery store foods without amendments, not soaking daily, cool temps, wrong UV bulbs, wrong basking bulbs, letting dogs around your tortoise, small enclosures, open topped enclosures, sand or soil substrates, bad vet care or advice, too much outside time for little babies, keeping a pair of tortoises in the same enclosure...
Heating And Lighting:
I use a 45-65 watt incandescent flood bulb on a 12 hour timer and adjust the height of the fixture to get a basking area of around 95-100 directly under the bulb. In some closed chambers I go with lower wattage bulbs. This depends on many factors and no one can tell you exactly what wattage you will need in your enclosure. Let your thermometer be your guide. I use a ceramic heating element or a radiant heat panel set to 80 degrees on a reptile thermostat to maintain my ambient temperature in the enclosure. The basking lamp should raise the day time ambient temperature into the high 80s or low 90s. Ambient should be no lower than 80, but drifting up to 90 during the heat of the day is good. The thermostat will keep your CHE or RHP off during these times, but ready to click on after the basking lamp clicks off and the ambient temperature starts to drop at night. I use LED bulbs when I want to brighten up the whole enclosure and I run these on the same timer as the basking bulb. There are other ways to do some of this, but trial and error have shown time and time again, that the above is what works the best. Don't use "spot" bulbs, reptile specialty bulbs, halogen bulbs, any cfl, or mercury vapor bulbs. You want a plain old, regular incandescent flood bulb from the hardware store. I buy them in six or twelve packs, so I always have extras on hand. They always go out at the most inopportune times.

UV:
Tortoises need regular exposure to the right kind of UV rays in order to make vitamin D2 into D3 to be able to utilize dietary calcium. Real sunshine is best, but be careful. Shade should always be available as babies can overheat and die surprisingly quickly. If your tortoise can get some regular sunning time in a safe outdoor enclosure, even just a couple of times a week for most of the year, you don't need any artificial UV. Its okay if you have to skip two or three weeks of sunning time during a cold winter spell. If you live somewhere with long frozen winters, then some artificial UV might be in order for that time of year. I no longer recommend mercury vapor bulbs for several reasons, but florescent HO (High Output) UV tubes work very well according to my UV meter. CFL type UV bulbs are ineffective as UV sources and sometime burn reptile eyes. No type of compact florescent bulb should be used over a tortoise. Also get yourself a Solarmeter 6.5. Without a UV meter, you are guessing about the UV levels in your enclosure, no different than guessing the temperature without a thermometer. At least without a thermometer you can still feel the temperature with your hand. You can't feel UV levels. These meters pay for themselves in short order since you won't be replacing perfectly good working bulbs every six months, as the sellers recommend.

Too much outside time is bad for babies. It slows their growth tremendously and causes pyramiding. I've done many side-by-side experiments with clutch mates over the years to determine this fact. My general rule is an hour of access to sunshine per inch of tortoise. Once they reach around 5 inches, outside all day is fine, weather permitting, but soak daily and continue to let them sleep in their humid closed chamber every night until they get a bit bigger.

The Enclosure:
I have not been able to make any open topped enclosure work to my satisfaction. Low sided open topped enclosures like tortoise tables and sweater boxes are the worst. No amount of covering, or attempts to slow heat and humidity loss have worked well for me. There is just no way to keep the warm humid air where you want it. Closed chambers are the way to go. Maintaining whatever temperature and humidity you want is easy and efficient in a closed chamber. They use a lot less electricity because all of your heat and humidity is contained with nowhere to go. It also makes maintaining warm night temps a snap. Open tops allow all your warm humid air to escape up and into the room where your enclosure sits. Even if you cover most of the top, the heat lamps create a chimney effect and draw your heat and humidity up and out. Having the heat lamps outside, or on top of, the enclosure also lets the majority of the electrically generated heat you are creating float up up and away. A closed chamber contains all the heat and humidity. It works best if all the heating and lighting equipment is INSIDE the enclosure with the tortoise. Any other way is a compromise and less than ideal. Maintaining a small open topped box at 80 degrees with 80% humidity in a regular sized room that is 70 degrees and 20% humidity is VERY difficult, if not impossible in a practical sense. A closed chamber makes it easy.
Here are pictures of the plain basic closed chambers that I use to start babies:
View attachment 291552
View attachment 291554
You can make it much more fancy and add plants and decorations if you want. I'm going for simplicity and I spend time making their outdoor enclosures more fantastic. When done correctly, your baby will only be in this enclosure for a year or two, and then it will be time to move outside full time with a heated night box, or get much larger indoor accommodations if this is what your climate dictates.

What if you already bought a glass tank or wooden tortoise enclosure? How can you make that one work? You really can't. Covering the top and trying to contain the heat and humidity is better than nothing, but the sooner you resign yourself to buying or building the right kind of enclosure, the sooner you and your tortoise will reap the benefits. Almost everyone gets bad info from the breeder, pet store, vets, and all over the internet. I'm sorry this happens and sorry you bought all the wrong stuff, but it helps no one when a person keeps trying to jam that square peg into a round hole. Think it over, take a deep breath, and just go get the correct stuff now that you know. I encourage people to return the items to the pet shop and tell them why. Eventually they will learn and stop selling dangerous, bad, and useless items to people.

You need to know, and periodically adjust your temperatures. You need to regularly check warm side, cool side, basking spot and night temps, and adjust as needed. Every enclosure is different and they even change with the seasons in most households. It is not enough to screw a bulb in and walk away. Check those temps, and make adjustments, preferably BEFORE the baby even comes home. I like to use an infrared temp gun AND digital thermometers for this purpose. Check your temps early and often.

Enclosure Size:
Simply put: The bigger the better. I start babies in a 30x48 inch closed chamber. As a minimum, I would suggest no smaller than 36"x18" for a tiny hatchling, but you'll need to upgrade quickly. They need room to roam around. Once you put in the food and water bowls, the humid hide, and any decorations or potted plants, there is hardly any room left over to walk. Tortoises do not tend to do as well as some other types of reptiles when stuffed into small enclosures. They need room to roam inside their safe heated enclosures, and the floor is not a safe option. Don't think that you'll use a smaller enclosure, and just let Sheldon out to roam the floor for some exercise. This almost always ends in disaster. Its bad for your tortoise and impaction, sickness, injury, or death is the usual result. "But, but, but... I make it safe and supervise closely..." says every person until the day that disaster eventually strikes and they realize they were wrong. Its a terrible sickening feeling to hold a dead tortoise in your hand. Don't put yourself through this. Make a large enclosure. Don't have room for a large enclosure? Get a different pet that can live in a smaller enclosure that you have room for. Tortoises aren't good pets for everyone. For a sulcata, even 4x8' is only going to last a year or two. You might get three years with it for a star, leopard or slower growing sulcata, but that is optimistic. Outdoor enclosures can be even larger. Babies will NOT get lost or overwhelmed in 10x10 foot enclosure. In the wild they roam far greater distances than that.

Humid Hide Boxes:
This offers the tortoise a more humid place to retreat to and sleep and can simulate some of the more damp micro-climates they might utilize in the wild. It is as simple as getting a $2 black dishwashing tub from Walmart, flipping it upside down and cutting out a small door hole. I keep the substrate under the tub more damp than the surrounding substrate and it works great. You can also use plastic shoe boxes. Sphagnum moss is unnecessary and potentially dangerous since they eat it, and it can cause an impaction. The humid hide is a very important detail that should not be overlooked. Half logs and flower pots on their sides do not work. They are not closed in enough.

Substrate:
There are only three viable options. Coco coir, orchid bark, and cypress mulch. All of these can be purchased in bulk at most hardware or garden center stores at a tremendous savings. I don't like coco coir for these species because its too messy. I don't like cypress mulch because the pieces aren't uniform, some pieces are too big or too sharp, and because it smells like the swamp that is came from. If these two are all you can find, then go ahead and use them. They are safe and suitable. Fine grade orchid bark works the best. Its cheap, easy, holds moisture well, doesn't stink, easy to clean, easy for babies to walk on, not an ingestion hazard, etc... I recommend against any store bought soil, "Pets At Home" reptile bedding with the little white limestone bits in it, wood shavings or chips, ground walnut shell, corn cob bedding, rabbit pellets, compressed grass pellet bedding, newspaper pellets, hay, cedar, or any amount of sand. None of those are safe or suitable for an indoor tortoise enclosure.

Water Dishes:
Plain old terra cotta plant saucers work best. They come in a variety of sizes to suit any size tortoise, they offer good traction to little wet tortoise feet, they have low sides, they are cheap so you can buy extras, and they are shallow so your tortoise won't drown if it happens to flip over and land upside down in the water bowl. Sink the bowl into the substrate for best results. I prefer to give babies two water bowls. Do NOT use the typical ramped pet store bowls. These are great for snakes and lizards, but they can literally be death traps for tortoises. Clean your terra cotta saucer as often as needed. The more they track food and substrate into it, and the more they poop in it, the better. This means they are comfortable using their bowl, and that is great news. Just rinse and refill as many times a day as you need to. A water bowl that stays clean and untouched all day is a water bowl that is not being used for one reason or another. This is a bad sign, and it means your tortoise is one step closer to dehydration.

Soaking:
I recommend ALL hatchlings of ALL species be soaked in 85-95 degree water for at least 20-30 minutes every day. I use a tall sided opaque tub and keep the water depth about a third to half way up the body. If you have a humid enclosure with a humid hide and a water bowl, it is totally fine to skip a day here and there. Soaking only once a week and using a dry enclosure is not enough in my opinion, and I would not buy a hatchling that had been started that way. Once the tortoise gets to about 100 grams, I start skipping a day now and then. I gradually taper it down as they gain size. How often I soak older tortoises depends on a lot of factors, the current weather and season being two big ones. I soak more often when its hot and dry. If you live in a warm, humid, rainy climate, and your tortoise is exposed to these conditions, soaking less often is probably fine, but it still wont hurt anything to do it. You cannot soak too much or for too long. Soaking does not do any harm whatsoever. It doesn't make them poop too much and not digest their food, it doesn't upset their "water balance", whatever that is, it doesn't give them shell rot or respiratory infections, and it is NOT unnatural in any way. "But, but, but... Who soaks them every day in nature???" These babies hatch at the start of the RAINY season in the wild. Its raining on them frequently, and puddles form all over the place. Keep the soak water warm for the entire soak. If you are in a hurry, 10 minutes is enough. If you are forgetful or get distracted, an hour will do no harm.

Feeding:
So much contradictory info on this subject. Its simple. What do they eat in the wild. Grass, weeds, leaves, flowers, and succulents. Feed them a huge variety of these things, and you'll have a healthy tortoise. All of these species are very adaptable when it comes to diet and there is a very large margin of error, and many ways to do it right. What if you don't have this sort of "natural" tortoise food available for part of each year because you are in the snow? You will have no choice but to buy grocery store food. What's wrong with grocery store food? It tends to lack fiber, some items are low in calcium or have a poor calcium to phosphorous ratio, and some items have deleterious compounds in them. All of these short comings can be improved with some simple supplementation and amendments. A pinch of calcium two times per week will help fix that problem. You can also leave cuttle bone in the enclosure, so your tortoise can self-regulate its own calcium intake. What about fiber? Soaked horse hay pellets, soaked ZooMed Grassland pellets, Mazuri tortoise chow, "Salad style", "Herbal Hay" both from @TylerStewart and his lovely wife Sarah at Tortoisesupply.com, or many of the dried plants and leaves available from Will @Kapidolo Farms. If you must use grocery store foods, favor endive and escarole as your main staples. Add in arugula, cilantro, kale, collard, mustard and turnip greens, squash leaves, spring mix, romaine, green or red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, water cress, carrot tops, celery tops, bok choy, and whatever other greens you can find. If you mix in some of the aforementioned amendments, these grocery store foods will offer plenty of variety and fiber and be able to meet your tortoises nutritional needs just fine. I find it preferable to grab a few grapevine or mulberry leaves, or a handful of mallow and clover, or some broadleaf plantain leaves and some grass, but with the right additions, grocery store stuff is fine too. Grow your own stuff, or find it around you when possible. Tyler and Sarah also sell a fantastic Testudo seed mix that is great for ALL tortoise species and also super easy to grow in pots, trays, raised garden beds, or in outdoor tortoise enclosures. When that isn't possible, add a wide variety of good stuff to your grocery store greens to make them better.

Supplements:
I recommend you keep cuttle bone available all the time. Some never use it and some munch on it regularly. Some of mine will go months without touching it, and then suddenly eat the whole thing in a day or two. Sulcatas and leopards grow a lot. This requires a tremendous amount of calcium assimilation over time. A great diet is paramount, but it is still a good idea to give them some extra calcium regularly. I use a tiny pinch of RepCal or ZooMed plain old calcium carbonate twice a week. Much discussion has been given to whether or not they need D3 in their calcium supplement. Personally, I don't think it matters. Every tortoise should be getting adequate UV exposure one way or another, so they should be able to make their own D3. I also like to use a mineral supplement. "MinerAll" is my current brand of choice. It seems to help those tortoises that like to swallow pebbles and rocks. It is speculated that some tortoise eat rocks or substrate due to a mineral deficiency or imbalance. Whatever the reason, "MinerAll" seems to stop it or prevent it. Finally, I like to use a reptile vitamin supplement once a week, to round out any hidden deficiencies that may be in my diet over the course of a year.

Outdoor Enclosures:
This is a MUST in my opinion. Tortoises are solar powered, need lots of walking room, and benefit greatly from some time in the great outdoors. With hatchlings I start with short excursions of only an hour a day, followed by a soak on the way in. As they gain size, I like to leave them out longer and longer each day, weather permitting, until they eventually live outside full time with a heated night box of some sort, where climate allows. Outside time must be done with great care as there are many dangers. They can overheat, be eaten or mauled, or escape. Here is one simple idea. A large kiddie pool or horse watering trough could also work. If you don't have a suitable grassy area, you can put a plywood bottom on this with wheels and legs, and move it around. Do NOT let your baby roam free outside. You will lose it eventually, and you'll be unable to explain how it happened so fast when you were watching so carefully. Its a sickening feeling. Don't put yourself through this. Use an enclosure and make it large. Also, if you have a dog, or people who come to visit bring a dog, your tortoise is in grave danger. Be careful. EVERY dog will chew up a tortoise. It doesn't matter how nice and loving a dog it is. Tortoises are seen as chew toys by dogs. Don't let this happen to your tortoise. Physically prevent it with fencing and/or correct housing. Don't leave it to chance. It is a horrible sickening feeling holding a mauled tortoise in your hands. Don't put yourself through this.
View attachment 291555

Pyramiding:
This is the subject of many threads in itself. I will simply state here what I know to be true based on my experience, my experiments, conversations with people who live other countries and study tortoises, people who have kept them for decades here in the U.S., and personal observations of thousands of tortoises in all manners of keeping styles.

There are many things listed as causes of pyramiding. I can refute each one with multiple examples. Lack of UV, lack of calcium, too much protein, too much food, the wrong foods, fast growth, wrong temperatures, small enclosures, not enough exercise, indoor housing, etc. None of these factors CAUSES pyramiding. They can all be somehow related to it, but they don't cause it. Simply put: Pyramiding is caused by growth in conditions that are too dry. This is true for any species of tortoise, even the ones that don't typically pyramid. To prevent pyramiding I use a closed chamber and keep the ambient temperature 80 or higher all the time, I keep humidity at 80% or higher, I offer a humid hide that holds 95-100% humidity, I soak daily to ensure good hydration, and I spray the carapace with plain water several times a day. Sulcatas hatch during the African rainy season. It is hot, humid, rainy and marshy. It makes no sense to keep them in a dry box, with dry substrate, and a hot desiccating bulb overhead. Simulating this rainy season has grown me hundreds of smooth leopard and sulcata babies, as well as a few other species too. There are literally thousands of examples of other people succeeding using the same basic philosophy here on this forum. So please, don't keep sulcatas and leopards in desert-style enclosures. It is not healthy for them. They are not the least bit prone to shell rot, like some other species are, and they DO NOT get respiratory infections from high humidity as long as temps are 80 or higher everywhere in the enclosure, day and night. I don't say these things and come up with these assertions lightly. Its not that I raised one tortoise this way, and everything went okay. I have literally raised hundreds of tortoises of multiple species this way and had nothing but success. My methods and success rate have been repeated by thousands of tortoise keepers all over the globe. We have more than 10 years of living healthy examples to back up these assertions.

If you want to prevent pyramiding, simply do the above stuff.
View attachment 291556
View attachment 291557
View attachment 291558

Questions and conversation are welcome. The goal here is to help people to have happy, healthy, long lived tortoises and avoid some common mistakes.

Hey Tom, I frequently refer people to your care guides; I work at a local pet store that sells baby Sulcata tortoises alongside various other reptiles and amphibians. I will openly say that I am not too happy with how they are kept, but there isn't much that I can do other than sell them and do my best to make sure they are taken into a happy and healthy home (luckily they sell super fast). That being said, when I sell the baby torts I never hand out the care sheet they offer, instead, I refer them to here. The issue is that after I bring them here, they don't know where to buy the various items you suggest, and frankly I don't know where to tell them to buy them... Is there any way you would be able to attach a link to somewhere all these accessories can be purchased? Whether it is from an online seller or a local one? Thank you for all your great advice, thanks to you I have a happy and very healthy Sulcata that's gonna be 3 years old very soon :).
 

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,264
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
Hey Tom, I frequently refer people to your care guides; I work at a local pet store that sells baby Sulcata tortoises alongside various other reptiles and amphibians. I will openly say that I am not too happy with how they are kept, but there isn't much that I can do other than sell them and do my best to make sure they are taken into a happy and healthy home (luckily they sell super fast). That being said, when I sell the baby torts I never hand out the care sheet they offer, instead, I refer them to here. The issue is that after I bring them here, they don't know where to buy the various items you suggest, and frankly I don't know where to tell them to buy them... Is there any way you would be able to attach a link to somewhere all these accessories can be purchased? Whether it is from an online seller or a local one? Thank you for all your great advice, thanks to you I have a happy and very healthy Sulcata that's gonna be 3 years old very soon :).
Thanks for the kind words and thanks for helping all those baby tortoises!

Most of what is needed is found at hardware stores like Home Depot or Lowes, and Walmart. A few items like CHEs, reptile thermostats, and HO UV tubes can be stocked by the pet shops, or ordered online from many sellers that can be found with a search.
 

EddieT

New Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2020
Messages
7
Location (City and/or State)
BERNALILLO
Thanks for the kind words and thanks for helping all those baby tortoises!

Most of what is needed is found at hardware stores like Home Depot or Lowes, and Walmart. A few items like CHEs, reptile thermostats, and HO UV tubes can be stocked by the pet shops, or ordered online from many sellers that can be found with a search.
awesome ill be sure to let them know from now on :)
one more question, where did you get your baby enclosure you show in the pics above? did you build it or is there a place I can purchase something similar.
 

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,264
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
awesome ill be sure to let them know from now on :)
one more question, where did you get your baby enclosure you show in the pics above? did you build it or is there a place I can purchase something similar.
I think you are referring to the white enclosures I bought from Animal Plastics. They are fantastic enclosures from a great company. Super high quality and precision, great prices, great customer service, but there is one problem: You will wait 6-8 months to get your enclosure from them. If you are not in a hurry, its a great way to go, but who plans 8 months in advance? Most people are trying to put an enclosure together after they already have the tortoise!

Our own @Markw84 now makes fantastic enclosures, but word has spread and even he is a little backlogged now. Still a much shorter wait time than AP, and he is my first choice.

Other makers are popping up now trying to cash in on the demand for these enclosures, but I don't have first hand experience with them.

If I owned a store, I'd put in an order for a dozen T-12s and T-13s from Animal Plastics and have them sitting there ready to go. People want everything NOW! They don't want to plan ahead and wait for it. I keep thinking some company will start up and be able to mass produce these enclosures, but it keeps not happening...
 

MadChem

New Member
Joined
Feb 5, 2021
Messages
2
Location (City and/or State)
Philly
As they gain size, I like to leave them out longer and longer each day, weather permitting, until they eventually live outside full time with a heated night box of some sort, where climate allows.

Any chance there is a map showing "where climate allows"? Something like the USDA hardiness zone map, but for tortoises instead of crops? If not, do you have an opinion on sulcata outdoor habitat in zone 6b, a little north of Philly? And, yes, we do currently have a foot of snow on the ground.
 

Yossarian

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
Messages
813
Location (City and/or State)
Wales
Any chance there is a map showing "where climate allows"? Something like the USDA hardiness zone map, but for tortoises instead of crops? If not, do you have an opinion on sulcata outdoor habitat in zone 6b, a little north of Philly? And, yes, we do currently have a foot of snow on the ground.

My opinion on it is. . . a sulcata is an animal that requires high temperatures in excess of 90f-95f during the day, and minimum of 80f at night, whats your plan to provide those conditions a little north of philly when it is hovering around 40f and below for several months when your animal is 50kg? Anything you can think up that doesnt include a huge indoor heated space would be sorely inadequate, so an outdoor enclosure year round is a non-starter realistically.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tom

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,264
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
Any chance there is a map showing "where climate allows"? Something like the USDA hardiness zone map, but for tortoises instead of crops? If not, do you have an opinion on sulcata outdoor habitat in zone 6b, a little north of Philly? And, yes, we do currently have a foot of snow on the ground.
What I'm referring to there is if your climate has snow on the ground and below freezing weather for half the year or more, your climate does not allow year-round sunning.

Where I live, and in many of the states along the southern US border, many of our "winter days" reach into the 70s or higher. We had a week in January where the temp was reaching the 80s, and got up to 92 one day. We also have cold winter spells where the daily highs only reach the 50s for a few days in a row, but on the whole, my tortoises get sunshine year round. Not going to happen in Philly. You'll need and indoor plan for most of each year, and you should probably run a high quality indoor UV bulb all year, except in summer when they can get some warm outside time.
 

MadChem

New Member
Joined
Feb 5, 2021
Messages
2
Location (City and/or State)
Philly
What I'm referring to there is if your climate has snow on the ground and below freezing weather for half the year or more, your climate does not allow year-round sunning.

Where I live, and in many of the states along the southern US border, many of our "winter days" reach into the 70s or higher. We had a week in January where the temp was reaching the 80s, and got up to 92 one day. We also have cold winter spells where the daily highs only reach the 50s for a few days in a row, but on the whole, my tortoises get sunshine year round. Not going to happen in Philly. You'll need and indoor plan for most of each year, and you should probably run a high quality indoor UV bulb all year, except in summer when they can get some warm outside time.

Thanks to both you and Yossarian.
I have lots of experience with shelled reptiles, but they are all turtles not tortoises. I'm adopting a (supposedly) 3 year old little guy from an owner who is doing pretty much everything wrong, to the point that he was having trouble walking for a while. My goal is to make his life better for now, and good by summer.

I have "the hut" out back. It's a 10' x 15' building that I slapped together years ago. The wife and I lived in it while the real builder built our real house. I know I can heat it to 68F, and with more insulation warmer shouldn't be too much of a problem. It has a big doggie-door because my mastiff used to live in it. I can easily add a sauna in the corner and plenty of lights. Good enough? And are they adventurous / determined enough to use the doggie-door? Or will I have to let him in and out? Based on my memory of the Philly Zoo's Galapagos and Aldabra tortoise habitat, I should be pretty close. Their indoor area is (I think I'm remembering correctly) about 4x what I have, but they have lots more animals in it.

Do tortoises make vitamin D under the same conditions we do? The rule for humans is "if you are taller than your shadow is long" you are making D.
 

joeyyjoejoe

New Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2021
Messages
1
Location (City and/or State)
SF Bay, CA
Wow. Thank you Tom. Now I have to unlearn everything I was told about my tortoises' habitat. I wish I knew this information a year ago... You have me rethinking everything from humidity to enclosure size. I've had my yearling leopard living in dry conditions for almost a year now. Is it too late for this little guy? I am also curious if you have any experience with Greeks? I have a 5 year old Hermann's Tortoise aswell.
 

Rodvaleria

New Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2021
Messages
2
Location (City and/or State)
San jose
I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species.

Babies hatch during the start of the rainy season. It is hot, very humid, rainy, and marshy in some areas. There are puddles and lush green growing food everywhere. In some areas there is a dry season, but the hot monsoon season is when babies hatch, and babies find humid microclimates to hide in during drier times. In extreme conditions they aestivate and don't eat or grow at all when its hot and dry. Keeping your hatchling in a dry, desert-like enclosure, is a big mistake and an invitation to disaster. It is also very un-natural for these animals. Damp substrate, a water bowl, and a humid hide should all be pre-requisites. Along with this, warm temps day and night are necessary. Sulcatas, leopards and stars are NOT prone to shell rot at all, and they do not get respiratory infections in these damp conditions as long as temps are kept up. I shoot for no lower than 80 degrees day or night year round, and all three of these heat loving species do well with a day time ambient approaching 90 degrees. Humidity is at 80+% all the time. Most people keep them too cool and too dry. Adults can tolerate colder temps and drier conditions in some circumstances, but this care sheet is for hatchlings and babies and is aimed at helping them thrive, not just survive. I know the books, the breeders and the "experts" all say the opposite of this. They are wrong. They've been wrong for 30 years. For 20 of those years I was wrong right along with them. Some of us have learned and advanced. Some have not. Keep this in mind when consulting a vet, or a potential breeder or seller that you want to buy from. As soon as they contradict this info and tell you "this is a desert species", you will know NOT to buy from them.

Some General Notes:
  • Set up your enclosure, run it, check it and make adjustments BEFORE you bring home a new tortoise. Babies are easy if the set up is correct. Babies aren't delicate or difficult. When babies are not started correctly is when people have problems with them. Babies have a smaller margin of error due to their smaller body mass, if you've made mistakes, or if the enclosure and equipment isn't already set up and at the right temperatures.
  • You won't find most of what you need to set up a tortoise at a pet store. What you will find is expensive stuff that is bad for your tortoise and lots of bad advice. This is true even at most reptile specialty places. Where to get tortoise supplies then? The hardware store or large department stores. There are a few exceptions like reptile thermostats, some reptile heating elements, and UV tubes. I get these from on-line sellers.
  • If you are going the the grocery store to buy tortoise food, you are feeding the wrong stuff. If you have no other choice but to use grocery store food due to your climate and weather for part of the year, it will need to be amended to make it more suitable as tortoise food. More on this later.
  • It is my hope that this care sheet finds you BEFORE you buy a tortoise. Most breeders start their babies too dry. The end result is stunting, pyramiding and sometimes death weeks or months later. Don't get a baby from someone who starts them dry, on dry substrate, outdoors all day, and doesn't soak daily.
  • Some common mistakes to avoid, with more explanation later: Buying from the wrong (dry) source, getting advice and products from a pet store, free roaming indoors or out, feeding a diet of mostly grocery store foods without amendments, not soaking daily, cool temps, wrong UV bulbs, wrong basking bulbs, letting dogs around your tortoise, small enclosures, open topped enclosures, sand or soil substrates, bad vet care or advice, too much outside time for little babies, keeping a pair of tortoises in the same enclosure...
Heating And Lighting:
I use a 45-65 watt incandescent flood bulb on a 12 hour timer and adjust the height of the fixture to get a basking area of around 95-100 directly under the bulb. In some closed chambers I go with lower wattage bulbs. This depends on many factors and no one can tell you exactly what wattage you will need in your enclosure. Let your thermometer be your guide. I use a ceramic heating element or a radiant heat panel set to 80 degrees on a reptile thermostat to maintain my ambient temperature in the enclosure. The basking lamp should raise the day time ambient temperature into the high 80s or low 90s. Ambient should be no lower than 80, but drifting up to 90 during the heat of the day is good. The thermostat will keep your CHE or RHP off during these times, but ready to click on after the basking lamp clicks off and the ambient temperature starts to drop at night. I use LED bulbs when I want to brighten up the whole enclosure and I run these on the same timer as the basking bulb. There are other ways to do some of this, but trial and error have shown time and time again, that the above is what works the best. Don't use "spot" bulbs, reptile specialty bulbs, halogen bulbs, any cfl, or mercury vapor bulbs. You want a plain old, regular incandescent flood bulb from the hardware store. I buy them in six or twelve packs, so I always have extras on hand. They always go out at the most inopportune times.

UV:
Tortoises need regular exposure to the right kind of UV rays in order to make vitamin D2 into D3 to be able to utilize dietary calcium. Real sunshine is best, but be careful. Shade should always be available as babies can overheat and die surprisingly quickly. If your tortoise can get some regular sunning time in a safe outdoor enclosure, even just a couple of times a week for most of the year, you don't need any artificial UV. Its okay if you have to skip two or three weeks of sunning time during a cold winter spell. If you live somewhere with long frozen winters, then some artificial UV might be in order for that time of year. I no longer recommend mercury vapor bulbs for several reasons, but florescent HO (High Output) UV tubes work very well according to my UV meter. CFL type UV bulbs are ineffective as UV sources and sometime burn reptile eyes. No type of compact florescent bulb should be used over a tortoise. Also get yourself a Solarmeter 6.5. Without a UV meter, you are guessing about the UV levels in your enclosure, no different than guessing the temperature without a thermometer. At least without a thermometer you can still feel the temperature with your hand. You can't feel UV levels. These meters pay for themselves in short order since you won't be replacing perfectly good working bulbs every six months, as the sellers recommend.

Too much outside time is bad for babies. It slows their growth tremendously and causes pyramiding. I've done many side-by-side experiments with clutch mates over the years to determine this fact. My general rule is an hour of access to sunshine per inch of tortoise. Once they reach around 5 inches, outside all day is fine, weather permitting, but soak daily and continue to let them sleep in their humid closed chamber every night until they get a bit bigger.

The Enclosure:
I have not been able to make any open topped enclosure work to my satisfaction. Low sided open topped enclosures like tortoise tables and sweater boxes are the worst. No amount of covering, or attempts to slow heat and humidity loss have worked well for me. There is just no way to keep the warm humid air where you want it. Closed chambers are the way to go. Maintaining whatever temperature and humidity you want is easy and efficient in a closed chamber. They use a lot less electricity because all of your heat and humidity is contained with nowhere to go. It also makes maintaining warm night temps a snap. Open tops allow all your warm humid air to escape up and into the room where your enclosure sits. Even if you cover most of the top, the heat lamps create a chimney effect and draw your heat and humidity up and out. Having the heat lamps outside, or on top of, the enclosure also lets the majority of the electrically generated heat you are creating float up up and away. A closed chamber contains all the heat and humidity. It works best if all the heating and lighting equipment is INSIDE the enclosure with the tortoise. Any other way is a compromise and less than ideal. Maintaining a small open topped box at 80 degrees with 80% humidity in a regular sized room that is 70 degrees and 20% humidity is VERY difficult, if not impossible in a practical sense. A closed chamber makes it easy.
Here are pictures of the plain basic closed chambers that I use to start babies:
View attachment 291552
View attachment 291554
You can make it much more fancy and add plants and decorations if you want. I'm going for simplicity and I spend time making their outdoor enclosures more fantastic. When done correctly, your baby will only be in this enclosure for a year or two, and then it will be time to move outside full time with a heated night box, or get much larger indoor accommodations if this is what your climate dictates.

What if you already bought a glass tank or wooden tortoise enclosure? How can you make that one work? You really can't. Covering the top and trying to contain the heat and humidity is better than nothing, but the sooner you resign yourself to buying or building the right kind of enclosure, the sooner you and your tortoise will reap the benefits. Almost everyone gets bad info from the breeder, pet store, vets, and all over the internet. I'm sorry this happens and sorry you bought all the wrong stuff, but it helps no one when a person keeps trying to jam that square peg into a round hole. Think it over, take a deep breath, and just go get the correct stuff now that you know. I encourage people to return the items to the pet shop and tell them why. Eventually they will learn and stop selling dangerous, bad, and useless items to people.

You need to know, and periodically adjust your temperatures. You need to regularly check warm side, cool side, basking spot and night temps, and adjust as needed. Every enclosure is different and they even change with the seasons in most households. It is not enough to screw a bulb in and walk away. Check those temps, and make adjustments, preferably BEFORE the baby even comes home. I like to use an infrared temp gun AND digital thermometers for this purpose. Check your temps early and often.

Enclosure Size:
Simply put: The bigger the better. I start babies in a 30x48 inch closed chamber. As a minimum, I would suggest no smaller than 36"x18" for a tiny hatchling, but you'll need to upgrade quickly. They need room to roam around. Once you put in the food and water bowls, the humid hide, and any decorations or potted plants, there is hardly any room left over to walk. Tortoises do not tend to do as well as some other types of reptiles when stuffed into small enclosures. They need room to roam inside their safe heated enclosures, and the floor is not a safe option. Don't think that you'll use a smaller enclosure, and just let Sheldon out to roam the floor for some exercise. This almost always ends in disaster. Its bad for your tortoise and impaction, sickness, injury, or death is the usual result. "But, but, but... I make it safe and supervise closely..." says every person until the day that disaster eventually strikes and they realize they were wrong. Its a terrible sickening feeling to hold a dead tortoise in your hand. Don't put yourself through this. Make a large enclosure. Don't have room for a large enclosure? Get a different pet that can live in a smaller enclosure that you have room for. Tortoises aren't good pets for everyone. For a sulcata, even 4x8' is only going to last a year or two. You might get three years with it for a star, leopard or slower growing sulcata, but that is optimistic. Outdoor enclosures can be even larger. Babies will NOT get lost or overwhelmed in 10x10 foot enclosure. In the wild they roam far greater distances than that.

Humid Hide Boxes:
This offers the tortoise a more humid place to retreat to and sleep and can simulate some of the more damp micro-climates they might utilize in the wild. It is as simple as getting a $2 black dishwashing tub from Walmart, flipping it upside down and cutting out a small door hole. I keep the substrate under the tub more damp than the surrounding substrate and it works great. You can also use plastic shoe boxes. Sphagnum moss is unnecessary and potentially dangerous since they eat it, and it can cause an impaction. The humid hide is a very important detail that should not be overlooked. Half logs and flower pots on their sides do not work. They are not closed in enough.

Substrate:
There are only three viable options. Coco coir, orchid bark, and cypress mulch. All of these can be purchased in bulk at most hardware or garden center stores at a tremendous savings. I don't like coco coir for these species because its too messy. I don't like cypress mulch because the pieces aren't uniform, some pieces are too big or too sharp, and because it smells like the swamp that is came from. If these two are all you can find, then go ahead and use them. They are safe and suitable. Fine grade orchid bark works the best. Its cheap, easy, holds moisture well, doesn't stink, easy to clean, easy for babies to walk on, not an ingestion hazard, etc... I recommend against any store bought soil, "Pets At Home" reptile bedding with the little white limestone bits in it, wood shavings or chips, ground walnut shell, corn cob bedding, rabbit pellets, compressed grass pellet bedding, newspaper pellets, hay, cedar, or any amount of sand. None of those are safe or suitable for an indoor tortoise enclosure.

Water Dishes:
Plain old terra cotta plant saucers work best. They come in a variety of sizes to suit any size tortoise, they offer good traction to little wet tortoise feet, they have low sides, they are cheap so you can buy extras, and they are shallow so your tortoise won't drown if it happens to flip over and land upside down in the water bowl. Sink the bowl into the substrate for best results. I prefer to give babies two water bowls. Do NOT use the typical ramped pet store bowls. These are great for snakes and lizards, but they can literally be death traps for tortoises. Clean your terra cotta saucer as often as needed. The more they track food and substrate into it, and the more they poop in it, the better. This means they are comfortable using their bowl, and that is great news. Just rinse and refill as many times a day as you need to. A water bowl that stays clean and untouched all day is a water bowl that is not being used for one reason or another. This is a bad sign, and it means your tortoise is one step closer to dehydration.

Soaking:
I recommend ALL hatchlings of ALL species be soaked in 85-95 degree water for at least 20-30 minutes every day. I use a tall sided opaque tub and keep the water depth about a third to half way up the body. If you have a humid enclosure with a humid hide and a water bowl, it is totally fine to skip a day here and there. Soaking only once a week and using a dry enclosure is not enough in my opinion, and I would not buy a hatchling that had been started that way. Once the tortoise gets to about 100 grams, I start skipping a day now and then. I gradually taper it down as they gain size. How often I soak older tortoises depends on a lot of factors, the current weather and season being two big ones. I soak more often when its hot and dry. If you live in a warm, humid, rainy climate, and your tortoise is exposed to these conditions, soaking less often is probably fine, but it still wont hurt anything to do it. You cannot soak too much or for too long. Soaking does not do any harm whatsoever. It doesn't make them poop too much and not digest their food, it doesn't upset their "water balance", whatever that is, it doesn't give them shell rot or respiratory infections, and it is NOT unnatural in any way. "But, but, but... Who soaks them every day in nature???" These babies hatch at the start of the RAINY season in the wild. Its raining on them frequently, and puddles form all over the place. Keep the soak water warm for the entire soak. If you are in a hurry, 10 minutes is enough. If you are forgetful or get distracted, an hour will do no harm.

Feeding:
So much contradictory info on this subject. Its simple. What do they eat in the wild. Grass, weeds, leaves, flowers, and succulents. Feed them a huge variety of these things, and you'll have a healthy tortoise. All of these species are very adaptable when it comes to diet and there is a very large margin of error, and many ways to do it right. What if you don't have this sort of "natural" tortoise food available for part of each year because you are in the snow? You will have no choice but to buy grocery store food. What's wrong with grocery store food? It tends to lack fiber, some items are low in calcium or have a poor calcium to phosphorous ratio, and some items have deleterious compounds in them. All of these short comings can be improved with some simple supplementation and amendments. A pinch of calcium two times per week will help fix that problem. You can also leave cuttle bone in the enclosure, so your tortoise can self-regulate its own calcium intake. What about fiber? Soaked horse hay pellets, soaked ZooMed Grassland pellets, Mazuri tortoise chow, "Salad style", "Herbal Hay" both from @TylerStewart and his lovely wife Sarah at Tortoisesupply.com, or many of the dried plants and leaves available from Will @Kapidolo Farms. If you must use grocery store foods, favor endive and escarole as your main staples. Add in arugula, cilantro, kale, collard, mustard and turnip greens, squash leaves, spring mix, romaine, green or red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, water cress, carrot tops, celery tops, bok choy, and whatever other greens you can find. If you mix in some of the aforementioned amendments, these grocery store foods will offer plenty of variety and fiber and be able to meet your tortoises nutritional needs just fine. I find it preferable to grab a few grapevine or mulberry leaves, or a handful of mallow and clover, or some broadleaf plantain leaves and some grass, but with the right additions, grocery store stuff is fine too. Grow your own stuff, or find it around you when possible. Tyler and Sarah also sell a fantastic Testudo seed mix that is great for ALL tortoise species and also super easy to grow in pots, trays, raised garden beds, or in outdoor tortoise enclosures. When that isn't possible, add a wide variety of good stuff to your grocery store greens to make them better.

Supplements:
I recommend you keep cuttle bone available all the time. Some never use it and some munch on it regularly. Some of mine will go months without touching it, and then suddenly eat the whole thing in a day or two. Sulcatas and leopards grow a lot. This requires a tremendous amount of calcium assimilation over time. A great diet is paramount, but it is still a good idea to give them some extra calcium regularly. I use a tiny pinch of RepCal or ZooMed plain old calcium carbonate twice a week. Much discussion has been given to whether or not they need D3 in their calcium supplement. Personally, I don't think it matters. Every tortoise should be getting adequate UV exposure one way or another, so they should be able to make their own D3. I also like to use a mineral supplement. "MinerAll" is my current brand of choice. It seems to help those tortoises that like to swallow pebbles and rocks. It is speculated that some tortoise eat rocks or substrate due to a mineral deficiency or imbalance. Whatever the reason, "MinerAll" seems to stop it or prevent it. Finally, I like to use a reptile vitamin supplement once a week, to round out any hidden deficiencies that may be in my diet over the course of a year.

Outdoor Enclosures:
This is a MUST in my opinion. Tortoises are solar powered, need lots of walking room, and benefit greatly from some time in the great outdoors. With hatchlings I start with short excursions of only an hour a day, followed by a soak on the way in. As they gain size, I like to leave them out longer and longer each day, weather permitting, until they eventually live outside full time with a heated night box of some sort, where climate allows. Outside time must be done with great care as there are many dangers. They can overheat, be eaten or mauled, or escape. Here is one simple idea. A large kiddie pool or horse watering trough could also work. If you don't have a suitable grassy area, you can put a plywood bottom on this with wheels and legs, and move it around. Do NOT let your baby roam free outside. You will lose it eventually, and you'll be unable to explain how it happened so fast when you were watching so carefully. Its a sickening feeling. Don't put yourself through this. Use an enclosure and make it large. Also, if you have a dog, or people who come to visit bring a dog, your tortoise is in grave danger. Be careful. EVERY dog will chew up a tortoise. It doesn't matter how nice and loving a dog it is. Tortoises are seen as chew toys by dogs. Don't let this happen to your tortoise. Physically prevent it with fencing and/or correct housing. Don't leave it to chance. It is a horrible sickening feeling holding a mauled tortoise in your hands. Don't put yourself through this.
View attachment 291555

Pyramiding:
This is the subject of many threads in itself. I will simply state here what I know to be true based on my experience, my experiments, conversations with people who live other countries and study tortoises, people who have kept them for decades here in the U.S., and personal observations of thousands of tortoises in all manners of keeping styles.

There are many things listed as causes of pyramiding. I can refute each one with multiple examples. Lack of UV, lack of calcium, too much protein, too much food, the wrong foods, fast growth, wrong temperatures, small enclosures, not enough exercise, indoor housing, etc. None of these factors CAUSES pyramiding. They can all be somehow related to it, but they don't cause it. Simply put: Pyramiding is caused by growth in conditions that are too dry. This is true for any species of tortoise, even the ones that don't typically pyramid. To prevent pyramiding I use a closed chamber and keep the ambient temperature 80 or higher all the time, I keep humidity at 80% or higher, I offer a humid hide that holds 95-100% humidity, I soak daily to ensure good hydration, and I spray the carapace with plain water several times a day. Sulcatas hatch during the African rainy season. It is hot, humid, rainy and marshy. It makes no sense to keep them in a dry box, with dry substrate, and a hot desiccating bulb overhead. Simulating this rainy season has grown me hundreds of smooth leopard and sulcata babies, as well as a few other species too. There are literally thousands of examples of other people succeeding using the same basic philosophy here on this forum. So please, don't keep sulcatas and leopards in desert-style enclosures. It is not healthy for them. They are not the least bit prone to shell rot, like some other species are, and they DO NOT get respiratory infections from high humidity as long as temps are 80 or higher everywhere in the enclosure, day and night. I don't say these things and come up with these assertions lightly. Its not that I raised one tortoise this way, and everything went okay. I have literally raised hundreds of tortoises of multiple species this way and had nothing but success. My methods and success rate have been repeated by thousands of tortoise keepers all over the globe. We have more than 10 years of living healthy examples to back up these assertions.

If you want to prevent pyramiding, simply do the above stuff.
View attachment 291556
View attachment 291557
View attachment 291558

Questions and conversation are welcome. The goal here is to help people to have happy, healthy, long lived tortoises and avoid some common mistakes.
Thank you for all the info! Which type of light fixture can I use with a 65 watt flood light bulb for my 1 yr sulcata ?
 

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,264
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
Thank you for all the info! Which type of light fixture can I use with a 65 watt flood light bulb for my 1 yr sulcata ?
I get these from Home Depot:
Brooder+Plug-In+Hanging+Light.jpg
Throw the little guard wire thingies away and remove the clamp. Hang it from over head.

In a closed chamber you can also use flush mounted sockets.
 
Top