Updated table

[Jlant85]

Greek torts are a good pick ^_^

 

[gtc]

Yepp greeks are great!

One more question.....from what I remember from your initial post you said that before you added the humid hide with the humidifier your torts began to pyramid. I was wondering if your torts are required to sleep in that hide every night to avoid pyramiding? My greek likes to sleep in different hides every night. What do you do if your torts fall asleep outside the humid hide with the humidifier? Do you put them in there yourself in that case?

 

[julietteq]

Yepp greeks are great!

One more question.....from what I remember from your initial post you said that before you added the humid hide with the humidifier your torts began to pyramid. I was wondering if your torts are required to sleep in that hide every night to avoid pyramiding? My greek likes to sleep in different hides every night. What do you do if your torts fall asleep outside the humid hide with the humidifier? Do you put them in there yourself in that case?

Well, I believe my torts know exactly what they need at what time. It is my job to provide them with the different climates they would have access to in nature so they can choose themselves. They have different hides all with different temps and humidity. They also have plants where they can hide under and they sometimes sleep under there.

I have come to believe more and more that it was not the lack of extreme humidity (which is what is currently advised by most to prevent pyramiding in the form of closed aquariums) that caused one of them to pyramid originally. What I have changed since they started pyramiding is:

- food: only once every 2 days, no pellets, just grass, hay, cactus, cactus pears, tortoise grazing mix. All their food is homegrown.

- light are at least 50 cm from their top shell and they are only on for app. 6 hrs a day (09.00 - 11.00, 13.00 - 15.00, 17.00 - 19.00). when the lights are off, the temp outside the hides will drop to around 70F but the temp in the hides will never go below 80. The cement hides I created hold the heat pretty well.

- They have a soak every day since I really like that they poo and pee in there so I do not have to clean up their table.

- lots and lots of live plants and real live grass as substrate

- a lot of different hides with different temps and humidity levels. You can achieve this by making different shaped hides, different substrate, and of course the location of the hides. For example: if you have spagnum moss in your hide, it will be more humid then when you use excavator sand. A large entrance to the hide will hold moisture and temps less well, if the hide is under a heatlamp it will be warmer. A dome shaped hide will allow for different temps inside the hide, a tunnel shape hide will have a different climate in the front compared to the back. A hide made from cement will have a different microclimate then a cement hide lined inside completely with the stuff they use to make compressed coconut fiber flower pots. The thickness of the cement you use to make a hide is also relevant. If you use a thick layer of cement the climate in the hide will be much more stable then when you use a thin layer.

(I have been experimenting a lot with Hydraulic cement as you can see and it is wonderful material plus it is really cheap and looks pretty !)

I would like to point out, that I am very new to tortoises so when in doubt go for the proven warm and humid method. I spend an extreme amount of time on improving my torts table based on their behavour and what I learn from books about tortoises. The reason why I decided to not give my torts the extreme humidity treatment is because I believe this method is too extreme compared to the conditions they would encounter in their natural environment and although so far it is preventing torts from pyramiding and they appear to be healthy, we have only used this method for a few decades max. We have no idea what the effect of this method will be on a 70 year old tortoise. On the other hand, we will not know if what I did is the right thing either for the next 7 decades at least!

Just to get it straight, I am not promoting a different way of raising torts, I have decided that I wanted to try a different way and so far, so good….

Juliette

 

[colejohnson73]

I was thinking if a box or wood turtle but I could change my mind.