Best substrate - the ongoing debate

[geckomadgyal]

Which one do you use and which one do you think is best?

(Mainly a lizard based topic but hey)

Plus, don't use digestible substrate from livefoods as a few bits have just blocked my gecko's gut and she's ill!! great!! (she's getting better!!)

But what are everyone's thoughts?

[Lee]

newspaper for dry living animals or coco fibre or orchid bark for more humid loving lizards

[ccfcexile]

I can only speak about snakes but I would say newspaper but it doesn't help with asthetics. I prefer Aspen. It looks good and when they deficate it clumps up and you can just pick up the clump and throw it out!

[punkyjen]

For my snakes i use newspaper with about 2 inches of aspen on top of it, as corns like to burrow. plus its easy to take the poop out, as its very absorbant sub.

[jonnydotcom]

i use repti-bark in my royals viv's and aspen in with my skink for the same reason as jen he loves to burrow

[Paul]

For most of my animals I keep them on paper but there area few exceptions like my fat tails and frog eyes. They both require the humidity so I use eco earth and orchid bark.

[Kimmy]

With Kate my leo, I had her on sand until recently when my other half changed her to paper. Aesthetically I liked the sand and she had no problems with impaction etc, however saying that, younger geckos and lizards would eat more sand than we realise and it would easily lead to impaction. So paper to reduce all risks, but sand if you want

[geckomadgyal]

sands a terrible idea...its definitely not worth the risk. when i first got a leo i was given some horrible dusty gravel...it was nasty. but still, suppose its all down to trying and testing different substrates. We should get a top 10 for each category of Reptile up in the caresheets section!!

[Paul]

geckomadgyal said:

sands a terrible idea...its definitely not worth the risk. when i first got a leo i was given some horrible dusty gravel...it was nasty. but still, suppose its all down to trying and testing different substrates. We should get a top 10 for each category of Reptile up in the caresheets section!!

Depends on the type of sand you use though. The calci sand stuff I found very course and feared it'd cause impaction quicker than finer sand. So I usually kept my leos on bird sand that i got from my local shop and never had any probs with it.

But as I stated. I now keep my animals on paper with the few exceptions who need the humidity.

[geckomadgyal]

bird sand i suppose u could get off with, but i would never go near the stuff now, infact kitchen roll is God!!

[PeterUK]

I keep almost all of my geckos on sand (bird or play) or a mixture of sand and eco-earth and place most hatchlings onto it straight from the incubator. In the many years I have kept reptiles i have never lost ANY through injesting sand.
Most lizards eat sand because there is something lacking in their diet and they are trying to compensate for this loss by eating the sand. Many lizards will inadvertently eat some sand while hunting their food, this is normal and so it will generally pass through their digestive system with no problems. The problems arise when they eat mouthfulls of the sand because of the 'missing something'.

The only substrate that i would never use is aspen. Open up a bag of it and grab a handful, see how many of the splinters stick into your palm and when the next time you feed your snake watch and see how many of the peices of aspen stick to the mouse/rat and go down the snakes gullet ...not for me thanks.

[Kimmy]

Very interesting. I didn't know about the missing ingredients. I knew invariably sand would be eaten when they hunt, but I didn't know why they did it voluntarily. Thank you

[tiger501]

I use playsand with my leo's and kitchen roll with my cresties, they are still young but will eventually go on to eco earth.

[Paul]

peteruk said:

The only substrate that i would never use is aspen. Open up a bag of it and grab a handful, see how many of the splinters stick into your palm and when the next time you feed your snake watch and see how many of the peices of aspen stick to the mouse/rat and go down the snakes gullet ...not for me thanks.

Lol wasnt it said that aspen is one of the best substrates on the markets for snakes though? All because the wood chips that people were using would be swallowed rather easily.

[PeterUK]

I think the best substrate is ........ No substrate, because nothing can go wrong with it :-)