Building a new house..help!

[Veron781]

Hiya,

Some of you might remember, I posted a few weeks ago advertising our pet tort 'Corky' to a good home.
Well, after much family discussion, we've decided that we really couldn't part with him.
Sooo...we are looking into upgrading his home, and we really want to build him the best.

He (or she! We're not quite sure yet!)..is a 3.5yr old hermann. Very active, very fit and healthy.
Has been currently living in a viv, with a heat mat, UV light (sold to us when we got him...now I am aware this is not the ideal housing, hence us wanting to upgrade).

So, we're wanting to start from scratch. Ideally, we want to build a table top housing, as his indoor housing....and also an outdoor housing area, where we can put him out in nice warm weather. He can't be left out 24/7 purely for the fact we'd worry about him over night, and theft etc.

So considering our tort's age...what does he need to have in his table top...and in his outdoor enclosure?


I'd really appreciate any help and guidelines you can give, as we do want to do the best for our tort.

Many thanks,

Veronica

[SCiARA]

Hello veronica,

I’m in the process of building one myself, after reading the great advice on this forum and looking at the pictures here and in the Pictures section i've decided to go with the following:

the table's sides are about 6.5 inches high and table is aprox 3ftx2ft. General rule is go as big as you can.
I’ve used a 50/50 mixture of soil and play/soft sand and built a shelter using bogwood, there's a rock in there directly under the T-rex 100 UV flood lamp (housed in a large Zoo Med Clamp Lamp). There’s a small "tree" for additional shelter, a water bowl and a slate piece. I've also added some pebbles for variation as torts love to investigate. There will be cuttle fish for them as and when.

I have posted a photo titled "Almost There" of my table halfway through, also, "Charlie's Indoor Enclosure” has some great pics of his indoor table

hope this helps with the indoor bit!

veronica

so glad you can keep Corky

if you look in the competition area you will see some great indoor and outdoor set ups

take care linda

[veebee]

An idea for a good cheap torty table is to buy a 'Universal workbench' from Focus DIY £19.99 (easy to assemble think B&Q sell them as well), add floor boards around the edges as walls, there you are torty table. I added a piece of wood on the top to make it even larger 5'x2' then added sides. Here is a pic


Vivienne ( Sorry administrators if I'm not to post a picture here!!!!)

[Eire_Ade]

Hi Viv,

No worrries this is in the right place, it has relevent content to the reply post.

Ade