[Natuela!]

Hi everybody,
I am a new user and I use paper towel in my eubles.
I find it more hygienic, safe, convenient and practical.

Natuela and MhaeGecko.

[tryme]

I'm using Vinyl.

[hcgirl88]

i use heavy duty felt that i got for 79 cents . works just as well as repti-carpet.

[charoozz520]

Hey guys, new here and for my leopard geckos I either use paper towel or tile as I rather be safe than sorry then using Sand

[Poptart 184]

I have two repti-carpets, so i can easily swap 'em. They're safe, and easy!

[Elizabeth Freer]

Hi All ~

I am hesitant to recommend sand. Here are my brief experiences. I sometimes recommend Jurassic Playsand. It is harvested from Utah deserts. Its crystals are rounded edged quartz crystals. The pointed silica crystals of even very fine beach sand, typical playsand, et cetera, are those which accumulate in the guts of some geckos and are ultimately fatal.

The young (?) gecko in the You Tube video seems to be an extreme example.

I breed Oedura castelnaui. Early on I kept them on a 50/50 mix of peat moss and Jurassic Playsand. Perhaps it was my timing of spraying the vivarium and feeding at the same time. Anyway, my first female Oedura castelnaui prolapsed on some of this mixture. It was not a pretty sight, but after a visit to the Emergency Room in the middle of the night, she recovered only to prolapse a second time in the coming weeks. This time it was more difficult for the vet to reinsert the tissues, but she did! This gecko did not require any sutures. For weeks afterwards I had to feed this gecko only chicken baby food, put Catlax (cat medicine for furballs) on her lips, do once daily tepid water soaks for no more than ten minutes, and monitor her stools for sand. Yes, she did pass a small amount of sand after awhile. The "bottomline" is that this was several years ago and she has fully recovered. I use a 50/50 mixture of cocopeat fiber and Jurassic Playsand in her nest box, but steer way clear of sand in the substrate of her vivarium. Right now I just use 100% cocopeat fiber.

I have only a single leopard female, Cha-cha-cha. Well, it is no secret that leopards like to dig...under her former water dish, under the petrified wood in her cage. I keep her on "regular" coarse-grained sand. To avoid the risk of impaction I place her crickets in a small ceramic feeding bowl with curved in sides. To keep the sometimes dusted crickets in that bowl, I amputate the back legs and two of the front legs of the crickets at the "knees". (Hope this does not disturb any of you.) I keep water dishes in many of my tanks...no need to lick from the sand or other substrate. In fact I never spray my leopard gecko's cage. Cha drinks from her water bowl. So far these techniques have worked in Seattle, the great Pacific Northwest USA!

I do use 100% Jurassic Playsand and small water dishes for some of my Pachydactylus tigrinus.

Originally Posted by aja19919

For those of you who are Pro Sand, what kind do you reccomend for reptiles?

Play Sand from Home Depot or Cali-Sand from Petco?

Thank you

[elgecko]

I used sand as the substrate the first time I kept and bred Leopard Geckos for over 8 years and never had any problems with using it.

Then I got rid of all the Leo's and set up my planted community fish tanks. That lasted about 6 years and I had the need for lizards again. (I change every few years.)

Then in 2005 I wanted lizards again. Researched many different ones and came back to Leopard Geckos.
This time I'm using tile on top of sand because of the possibility of sand impaction if the Leopard Geckos ingest the sand. I like the tile because it's very natural looking and easy to clean.

Here's one of my tanks:

[Dan K.]

I've been useing repti-carpet for a while. I like it cause it's cheep easy to clean and you don't have to worry about impaction. Also i've noticed pending on color of the sand the color ends up giving the gecko a hint of color. I used white sand for a while but when I switched to the carpet I saw the color in all of them blow up!

[tanala]

many of you seem to be paranoid regarding sand. I dont know where this comes from. Let me tell you one thing: sand is one of the most often used substrates in Germany, for many herps. There are reputable gecko breeders with decades of experience in dozens of gecko species that use ONLY sand (natural sand, no color ingredients etc.). No, i dont wanna punk you. The use of a natural substrate (like sand with rounded crystals, as Elizabeht Freer already said) is common herpetological standard knowledge here. Have you ever thought about what a leopard gecko has under his feet in nature? Believe me, there's no repti-carpet in Pakistan or Afghanistan; to me repti-carpet looks like hard grass. It can cause problems:
Repti-carpet

The feet of Eublepharis macularius (that's the scientific name of the leopard gecko) are made to walk over/ climb dry, rough surfaces like solid clay ground and stones. Futhermore, leopard gecko have no adhesive toe pads, so they have no good grip on tiles. That -again- paranoid fear of sand really pisses me off. I think i it said at least once, i say it once more - you can mix sand with clay/soil and let it dry. It will become solid then and can hardly be swallowed. If you have problems with impaction, you could probably change your diet - believe me, leopard geckos eat more than mealworms, and give more supplements. I thought quite a few minutes if i should post this, as quite a lot of people here seem to be completely resistant or ignorant of other opinions and just seem to believe everything they were told once. But i think newbies should have the possibility to hear several opinions. Do you think all your professional breeders use paper just because sand is a devilish, dangerous thing? Maybe they do it for economic reasons, don't they?
Just my very two cents, counting the seconds until the the word repti-carpet drops again.

[cliff_f]

Originally Posted by tanala

. That -again- paranoid fear of sand really pisses me off.

I agree!!