BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Here in Belgium almost everyone is keeping their bluetongueskinks on sand , but i read on this forum that this is not good.
What should i do ?
He's together with a bearded dragon in a 150 * 70 * 60 tank.

rather than the substrate you have an immediate problem to take care of!

you start by separating the beardie and the bts very quick! give them each a separate tank.
reasons:

- they need completely different temperatures
- they need different food
- they might try to kill eachother at some point. they are not being friendly to eachother when theyre cuddling together, its quite the opposite. and when they snap they go all out.


then you get another substrate that is not sand. the impaction risk isnt huge, but there are also sanitary factors and humidity factors that needs to be accounted for. i would suggest that you look for repti bark if you have money to spare, or like what i have (its imported from germany) pieces of wood chips which are 1 x 0.5 x 0.2 cm or so. make absolutely sure its not cedar or pine wood (or any very fragrant wood)

it depends a bit on which type of BTS you have though. some need more humidity than others, and some need very much less. some keep species of BTS on sand, but others are better on other substrate.

As Linnea said, definitely separate them. Contrary to popular belief, in the wild beardies have nothing to do with bluetongues. Plus, if you have an Indonesian species, their care requirements are on *completely* opposite ends of the scale!

Blueys are known to live together for years, only to suddenly turn on each other and inflict serious injuries. Bluetongues have extremely powerful jaws - Imagine what a bite capable of tearing limbs from another bluetongue could do to a beardie O.O

While sand poses no real impaction risk if they are not feed directly on it/ their food does not come into contact with it, there is a large variety of much more convenient alternatives available. Sand is just too heavy, hard to clean properly, gets everywhere- Basically, just plain annoying

Aspen, coco fibres, repti bark, newspaper pellets even - All are are much more convenient and cleaner alternative

Welcome to the forums!

There was at least one book back in the 90s that said a BTS and a BD could be kept together in the same tank. I had plans to put the 2 together at one point because of this and I never ended up getting the BD thankfully. Pretty much everyone agrees that keeping the 2 together is a bad idea. Thanks a pretty big tank. Maybe you could put a partition in the middle and still use it for both? As far as sand goes, pretty much everyone I've talked to says not to use it for a BTS.

Oh also---if you ever get another BTS---DO NOT keep them in the tank with your current BTS.

Justin

ok , i going to give the beardie another tank .
I dont want him to be injured.
I use by my snakes a sort of aspenbedding but it's called Lignocel
Maybe i going to use it for my BT to.

i'm planning to make 5 new terrariums for my 3 boa constrictors , beardie and BT.
I want to make them 145 cm long , 65 cm deep and i can make them only 47 cm high.
Is this good enough for him?
47 cm high is the maximum i can go.

thats a really good size. they dont actually need much height since theyre not mainly climbers - pure "floor" space is the best (as long as they dont get too close to the heatlamp height doesnt matter much)

my terrarium is 50 cm in hight, and i think you can drop as much as 7-8 cm of this and still be ok.
depends on the lamp and heat entirely

but i recommend getting it up to 47 cm so you can fill in a lot of burying substrate

That aspen bedding would work perfectly for a skink.

Sand isn't recommended for quite a few reasons - it isn't horrible to use, but something like aspen would be much better. Some of the issues with sand are that it can be ingested and cause impaction (this is an issue with any substrate, so don't feed directly on the substrate - but sand is particularly bad), it is very heavy and it doesn't absorb waste at all - so it is difficult to keep clean. Aspen will soak up waste a bit better making things easier to spot clean and it is something that they can burrow in.

I have to disagree about sand. I used fine play sand for my dragon. It's so easy to spot clean it clumps like cat litter. I can see a problem with fine sand used on bts, one it will get into its nose as they burrow. I just started using cypress and watched the skink pee on it. Then went to look for the spot but no sign of pee until I touched the wood. So that's not good. I tried some oak wood burning pellets on part of the tank as a test. I could tell were the skink went and was easy to clean. Any thoughts on wood stove burning pellets anyone?

bts pee is only water (according to caresheet)

the other substances come in the white urate : )

do you dont need to see where they peed as long as there isnt a pile of something else along with it - but that is easy noticeable.

bluesrt wrote:I tried some oak wood burning pellets on part of the tank as a test. I could tell were the skink went and was easy to clean. Any thoughts on wood stove burning pellets anyone?

Depends on what else make up the pellets. If its just pure wood compressed, then I see nothing wrong in using them. However, they could have other chemicals in it that I would not recommend. I know you can purchase compressed wood pelletized bedding for small animals. Go purchase it from your petstore.

I used the pellets for pellet stoves; I understand that they claim that water is what holds them together as not to burn any harmful chemicals. The skink did not burrow in them but I only had them at one end of the tank. Last night my skink left a 3 foot burrow trail and disappeared in the cypress. Today its been out and active all day again so I think this skink is happy with cypress!! And If I just have to worry about getting the fecal matter and white urates cleaned up then I think cypress is perfect to my skink.

Today i bought ZOOMED aspen bedding for snakes for my IJ.
Will this be good?

greetz

It is shredded and they are very pointy and irritate the eyes. It might work but I would get shaved instead of shredded.

Like this?



I read so many different opinions , pfff

I have seen strawpellets as substrate for rodents and other animals in the store today.
Does someone uses this?

I bought reptibark and he's in his new enclosure now.
aspen shaving were to dusty.
Here a pic with the aspen still in his tank.