Just looking at pics of some of your leopards and I noticed my leopards look dry around the eyes . One in particular has very dry skin around his eye . Do any of you have humidifiers .My torts are in a spare room they do go outside . The heating over winter had dried the air in the room. I use to use sand soil mix but that reduced the temp in the room dramatically .Now I have a hay area newspaper area and a sand/ soil area but humidity is low at 20 % .

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alicia x

if they are in the house then try putting a small bowl of water on the radiator. this will increase the humidity without it being damp. If you have a sand soil area indoors then try misting it daily to prevent it getting dusty. and of course bathe them! my leos really enjoy being in the bath, but Gracie is that big she cant stretch out in the baby bath. and i HATE having to put them in our bath, especially if they poo in it. takes ages to clean and stinks the house out.

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Thanks Ali , yep its an indoor room , I do bath them they love it ,getting hard as they are growing so big ,lifting them is hard work . I have a plastic storage box as a bath , dont know how Terry gets on with a 40lb tort .I will put more water in , the heater in their room isnt on at the moment just basking lights so it might settle. I have hundread and fifty watt bulb and a seperate 10.0 uv tube and recently put in another 150 watt bulb in aswell so the bigger torts have their own could these be too powerful . Temps are right just thinking in terms of brightness

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alicia x

I have to admit I have never tried to measure the humidity for my torts. The Leo's are on aubiose in the shed, but have a large tray of sand/soil which is in a mound, that gets sprayed daily, or I pour the water from their bath onto it, providing they haven't poo'd in the water! They have a half hour bath three times a week and a large water bowl which is changed daily, and that is is really!

your room can never really be too bright for an african tort! one of the first thing i learnt about them is that the LUX count in the areas they come from is super high, 1,000,000 at ground level. compare that to a 40w basking lamp at 45 LUX and it makes you realise just how our artificial environments dont match up to the wild! even in the greenhouse on a summer day i still have 2x powersun basking lamps on full pelt, as well as a normal lamp and a uvb compact. They say a tort can see the UV spectrum so i cant even imagine how drab our environment must be to them,compared to what it must be like in africa. so thats how i justify my £20 a week tortoise leccy bill!
Tortoise Trust Web - UNDERSTANDING REPTILE LIGHTING SYSTEMS gives some great info about different lighting systems and how to get the best outof what you have and how to maximise your output for our shelled buddies.

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Thanks Ali just printed that off , some "light " reading for me tonight lol .

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alicia x