What subtrate do you use/reccomend?

[Lizgirl]

What kind of lizard do you have? What kind of subtrate do you use?

I have an adult bearded dragon who I use Calcisand with. He is doing great and it looks great in the cage.

I also have a collared and baby bearded housed together. We are currently using a green carpet for them. Our collared used to be in a cage with calcisand, but we moved him because he seemed to be lonely and not doing well. I am thinking now that maybe he is too small to digest calcisand. He is doing better on the carpet.

I'm curious to see what other lizard owners use.

[Dena]

I have a rosy boa and I use Repti-sand. He is a desert snake so I figured "sand" would be the best.

[Ravnos]

I keep malis, collareds, beardies, sandfish, golden geckos, mediterranean geckos, ground skinks, anoles... and I avoid calcisand at all costs. In my few years of doing rescues I've seen way too many impactions directly caused by calcisand, even in adult animals, to even want to risk using it. For most of my lizards, I use wild bird seed; you know the kind with the little millet round pellets and small sun flower seeds in it? This is how the San Antonio zoo was keeping their lizards, and they have hundreds of thousands of dollars of rare species, I figured I couldn't go too wrong borrowing the idea for myself. Not to mention, its MUCH cheaper. 5 dollars will get me 50lbs, which lasts quite a long time.

I also have sand boas, which I keep on play sand, again, infinitely cheaper than calcisand. I feed them in a seperate enclosure so they don't eat any of it, and the water dish is cleaned daily to make sure theres no sand particles in it.

Rav

I have to agree with ravnos completely on this one. I have 3 bearded dragons, a ball python, and a brazilian rainbow boa. You definitely want to stay away from calcisand. I too use wild bird seed. And my snakes use a mixture of bed-a-beast and wood chips only because with my brazilian I have to keep his cage moist and anything else I used before stuck to him like glue. He eats out of his cage so I dont have to worry about him getting wood chips in him. But play sand and bird seed are usually the best ways to go.

I use ReptiBark and newspaper. Reptibark (from ZooMed I believe) claims to increase humidity and is attractive. I use newspaper in my snake's hideboxes since it is much easier to clean.

I've tried all sorts of substrates and paper towel has been the best. Replacing soiled paper is easy and it's cost effective.

[Lizgirl]

Baby, you do have a point, however it doesn't look very appealing. I would only use paper towels as a temporary set up.

[Becki]

With my igs (when I lived with my parents) we just used newspaper, it's cheap, safe, easy to clean up and easy to keep track of your lizards "schedual". I've been doing a TON of reasearch and when I get my cham I'll just be using paper towels. I really wanted to use something more appealing to my eye, but I got so much feedback on that particular issue and the dangers of pretty substrate that I personally will go for more safe/less hassle than appealing to me.

[Lizgirl]

You do have a point there.

[Becki]

LOL, I'm all about keeping things easy and costs down!

[Rocheal]

For our setup- we use coconut bark for the bedding stuff and Repti Sand... Or something- but I think it has calcium in it!! Not sure. The bark smells really good though..

[angelaT]

well most of my lizards are Desert breeds so I use 'Desert Blend Lizard Litter' it is ground up coconut shells and is completely digestible. For my Crested I use newspaper under carpet and I do the same for my Ball Python.

[thefiradragon]

desert blen is walnut shells if i remember right
its not anymore digestable then calcisand and can cause impacting and nasty cuts on his internals.

my 2 cents

ashley

[KaiyasMom]

I always used ripped up newsprint (newspaper without the print) or white computer paper. . . I figured I'd stay away from all things digestable (sand, calci-sand, bark, moss, etc) because I tried the calci-sand and the moss and I hated the sand and my geckos hated the moss (too much humidity). But the paper always seemed to work out all right!

I have some pictures of my old cages
http://www.geocities.com/geckofreak16950/habitat.html
if you'd like to see what they use to look like!

[sunshine]

i use two types in each cage calicum sand and bedabeast so the geckos can dig cosidering the geckos find one spot in the cage to go potty in its not hard to clean up a scooper or a piece of towel and its clean changing the cage about every 6 months