i have just thought of a brilliant new substrate...lets see what you all think.

>one piece construction, for ANY vivarium.
>no particles, to swallow
>no marks from print
>no crix can get under/around it
>waterproof
>wipe clean
>looks nice, matches the rest of the viv
>costs NOTHING
>never needs replacing, for the vivariums life...

yes, i am refering to the melamine faced chipboard, that 90% of vivs are made from.

so why not. if the animal craps, wipe it off, no risk of feeding accidents, trapped toes, doesnt hide foods.

is there some big reason for not using this, or am i a genius?

i know that large snakes will do poopies and end up swimming, but igonre them for a minute...

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*shrugs* we use newspaper.. when we got george the lady was useing glossy magazines and yeh.. it dosnt work. even with a small snake like george it was just too messy, newspaper is soo much more absorbant
Owen

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that reminds me of the point i was trying to make.... If the melamine viv is poorly sealed around the edges and there was an accident involving spilled water... well if this happened a couple of time syou would have a dead viv.. melamine swells terribly if water gets into it!
Owen

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Melamine can be a bit slippery for little gecko toes - and it's quite possible to scratch it with certain items of decor (like large rocks). This would allow moisture to get in.

Also, if you're using heating from underneath - like heat mats - I very much prefer personally to cover the mat with SOMETHING so that the animal can't touch it directly or more importantly pee on the terminal block.

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I would say..

It's slippery. Doesn't allow grip at all for snakes, and probably not for lizards either. Certainly with snake I think it would be harder to travel on, meaning lack of body tone, less exercise, more stress.

It has no burrowing properties. Many species do like to burrow. Chippings, sand, whatever people use, is appropriate for these species. Likewise with digging.

Cleaning - its not that easy to wipe off dried poo to be honest. You let a beardie do a stinker and don't notice till the next day, and try to wipe it off. It requires scrubbing. And hot water. and possibly some disinfectant. You would certainly need to disinfect the viv more often as just wiping it away will not kill the bacteria. Now you don't need all of that if you just remove that section of the substrate by picking it out and the surrounding bits of substrate it touched.

Humidity - any animal that requires humidity, well it helps if the substrate holds the moisture and then dries out. For my ATBs i used to literally empty a cup of water onto thick newspaper, and it would slowly dry out... but it wasn't enough water to damage the wood.

That's another issue.. spillage, watery poo or urates even, will eventually damage the wood. It may be waterproof on the surface but it is certainly not rot proof.

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fair enough just a thought, i'll stick to aspen, soil,orchid bark and beech chips, just thought it might work for peope using slate and simalar

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i stick to aspen its very good stuff

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1.0.0 Okeetee corn Ekan

yeah, i use differnt things for differnt animals though.

the hoggie, king, and milk are on aspen,

but the WD is planted out, so has soils, with some nice bark on top.

theburmese and royal have orchid, and the bosc likes to dig, so he has soil, and orchid bark.

what soils do other people use?

mine is potting compost, cocco brick, and sand in 3:2:1 ratio (mesured by handfuls lol)

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I use beech chips and aubiose bedding.

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