trying a new substrate! (leopard geckos)

[robhalex]

right even though ive never ever ever had problems with sand with my leopard geckos, i found a huge infestation of baby crickets last nyt! now when i normally feed i take out all the left overs in the morning before work to prevent this sort of thing happening except it appears i must have missed a couple that got into the shed box. i opened it up today and it was literally crawling with thousands of the little buggers. i squished a few and then took a closer look all around and it was just as bad everywhere else. they where all under the sand in one corner.

anyway i took out all the sphagnum moss in the shed box and microwaved it for 10 minutes then froze it then thawed it out and its killed them all in there. but i also completely changed the substrate. i didnt have any more sand left and i didnt want the hassle of heating and freezing sand aswell because it would have taken absolutely ages, so what i did was make use of what was lying around my room.

heres what i found:
half a brick of expandable coconut fibre (eco-earth)
a biiiiig bag of beechwood chippings (chipsi)
a bag of aspen bedding

i used half the aspen bedding on my snakes RUB so had half left.
i expanded the coconut fibre in a bucket by pouring a kettle of boiling water over it, i used boiling water for 2 reasons, firstly being that it kills any bacteria or parasites that may have taken up home in there, and secondly because it works soooooo much faster than by using cold water. i mean its almost instantaneous. with cold water i would leave it in for upto 20 minutes, and it would be just about there but with the boiling water it just literally absorbed as i poured. just had to leave it to cool down lol.

while it was cooling down i cleaned the viv out, removing all the sand and then disinfecting.

i then just got the bucket and poured it all into a huge pile inside the viv and poured a load of the wood chippings in with the aspen bedding so it was just a huge pile and then mixed it all up so it was a pretty even mix throughout and then just spread it all out then put the ceramic heater on full whack for a few hours to dry it out for abit!

ive done this before for my tarantulas and it does look pretty good if you ask me and its going to be very hard for the geckos to swallow any of it because the aspen and beechwood help hold it all together.

anyway let me know what you think, heres a few pics of it just to show you how it works!
this is them in a faunarium with the cat watching keenly







dont know if anybody else has tried doing it this way before but im sure im not the first, just havent seen it in use anywhere else.

thanks for taking the time to read.

[Sarah-Jayne]

Be very very careful that eco-earth will make it far too humid for your leos

[robhalex]

Originally Posted by Sarah-Jayne

Be very very careful that eco-earth will make it far too humid for your leos

it dries out to a powder. i use it with my tarantulas. just got to make sure not to spill any water onto it!

[Sarah-Jayne]

Yeah I know it dries out, I use it for my crested gecko, but right now it will be causing alot of humidity, and too much humidity is very bad for leos

[robhalex]

which is why i dried it out earlier

[joe190]

looks well cool
personally would'nt use it cos of impaction but it looks wicked!