Indoor Housing ideas/help please
 

My housemates are moving out of my house so my tortoises are getting a new and larger indoor enclosure.
I have 2 torts both 6 years old, one spur thigh and 1 hermanns so I have a double decker enclosure. Think bunk bed style. Each of the current enclosures is 120 x 60cm. They both go out around the house during the day and in the garden in the summer.
Each of the new enclosures will be 240 x 100 cm.
To maximize space I am going to set them up in the same double decker style but I want ideas on what to put in the enclosure. Just want them to be happy and not bored or hungry when I'm not around to get them out.
Where the current enclosure is smaller its just got 1 heat/uvb lamp, shallow water bowl (I use a terracotta plant pot saucer) and a hide for them to go into if they want to. Neither of them really use the hide but its there if they to.
As this is going to be a bigger enclosure will I need a second heat lamp? Does it need to still be UVB or is just a normal heat lamp ok?
I was thinking of using growbag trays - the ones I have found will mean there will be 5 in each enclosure, I was thinking of making a couple of them into grass/dandelion trays so there is some different terrain and food source when they want it.
The spur thigh seems to really like climbing and exploring everything so I wanted to put a bit more stuff for her to interact with but I am worried about her ending up on her back or stuck.
Ideas or photos of your own set ups would be really helpful.
Thanks in advance :)

When I had mine indoors, I used the plastic seed trays so that I could change them more easily - particularly the one with the water bowl in! Although I did put the water bowl inside a large plastic pot saucer and this made a huge difference.

The idea was to grow weeds in the plastic containers so that I could swap them over. This did not work for me at all! They either trampled them down or they quickly died.

The one thing they did like was to hide under a small towel. They didn't bother with a hide. At one cooler end of the pen I blocked a section off so that it was also dark and they would go there to bed usually.


I found the tray idea on the Tortoise Trust web site and obviously put substrate in (at the time top soil and sand was being recommended, but I think most people agree just soil is fine).


I put in large smooth stones and they seemed to enjoy climbing over these, or basking.
Hope this all makes sense?

all sounds good and jan has some fab ideas. tort will be better if has to turn at made up corners or/ and walk round obstacles - makes them feel safer darting for cover and also back in the days if they couldn't see 1 metre in front then that was a good start. Some species though I find like marginated seem to like the entire lawn !!! (tortydat!!!), to themselves without a obstacle in sight!!! otherwise they either push it over or try to eat it ! I have found CB

Hi there, I have bunk beds ( 2ftx4ft) for my two small spur thighed, The have top soil throughout, I have a heat lamp which comes over one of the short sides and I rigged up strip lights on wooded angled brackets so it was over the top in the centre shining directly downwards, the one on the bottom I hung from a small chain to get it close enough. I have a small wooden bendable cave type thing they go into to sleep, another much larger one that acts like a small ramp they climb over, in the centre of the pens, just make sure they can’t climb out when on top of it! I put slate stones in on half the pen, just so they were walking on something different, and on top of there at one corner a large piece of slate to put the leaves on, I also have other large stones dotted around the pen. And a shallow water bowl . And that kind of fills it to be honest. I don’t put plants in because as Jan sais they tend to trample everything. You can get small plant trays from Homebase which have fittings to clip over the side of wood, I’ve seen them, but never tried them. Hope this helps.

like sound of that poppy - you should post an image as sounds great ! CB