This statement is the usually spouted reason for using tortoise tables instead of vivs. Ventilation is important, but perhaps, if you were to look a little more closely at what happens in the wild you will see that tortoises and many other reptiles have evolved to live in poorly ventilated hiding areas and burrows. This can be for a night, or for a few days when bad weather or indeed for several months whn hibernating. Also, lizard species that occur in the same regions and terrain and behave in a similar way as tortoises do fine in vivs as will thousands of keepers testify. So all in all its easy to see why us old hands like Ed and myself cant fully buy into the lack of ventilation with vivs.

Humidity build up? I monitor humidity in all my "dry set up" vivaria for many reptile species - with a small water bowl a viv, if set up correctly can easily run at around 30-40% - ideal for many common pet species of tortoises.

And, although I can respect your statement regarding that all the tortoises you have seen cant cope with see through barriers - I cant say that all the tortoises i have seen have had similar problems. I see probably more tortoise behaviour in a day than many keepers will see in a life time. Most tortoise will try to climb up a barrier whether its see through or not. Although I hasten to add that I have a preference to not using glass - and when using vivs for tortoises I make sure there is a solid plinth at floor level rather than glass going to the floor.

Oh, and it was only yesterday that I had an e-mail from a girl saying that she had swapped from a table to a viv and reported that the tortoise was doing much better and seemed happier. Not one of my customers, she had taken to do this herself as she was unhappy with how the tortoise was doing. This is the invisable side of tortoise keeping - most keepers dont frequent these forums where tables are so popular.

To answer the original poster, I would suggest that most easily obtainable species will only be fine in that size of viv for around the first two or three years of its life. After then you will need something bigger. As Ed has pointed out, Kleinmans, a very small species, would perhaps be suitable, but hard to buy, very expensive and I still feel that more space would be required for a permanent set up. Hope that helps.

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