Hi

Have had a good read through the site and am very impressed. Have kept repiles for years but tortoises are new to me, now have my own house and more time on my hands so brought myself a herrmans tortoise which i have named alan. The care sheets on this site are great.

Just thought id say a little bit bout the pet shop alan came from which im pleased to say will only order a tortoise for someone if they order it, and not just to sit in tanks till somone buys it. The pet shop owner is a good friend of mine but only knows so much about tortoises. They are also open to new ideas and have asked me to print out some care sheets from this site and said they will give your site details to there tortoise customers. I hope this is ok and makes a difference

great stuff

Hi,

Welcome to the website, and I'm so pleased that you are finding the information on here useful! And well done for trying to help your friend at the pet shop learn more about tortoises. If you could print out the care sheets from our site and give them to him to hand out, that would be great, and might make a real difference to the lives of some of the tortoises that he sells.

One thing you might talk to him about is the indoor living accommodation for tortoises. Pet shops usually try and sell vivariums to tort owners. Now vivariums are great for many kinds of reptiles, but for tortoises -- and especially the Mediterranean and African tortoises that are sold by pet shops -- they can be lethal. The reason for this is that because of the enclosed nature of vivs, the torts can't get the good temperature gradient that they need (30C at one end and 20C at the other end); they usually don't provide enough floor space for adequate movement of the tort (and tortoises need much more space to move around than people think); and the build-up of humidity in a vivarium -- even if it is ventilated -- can play havoc with a tortoise's respiratory system.

So a tortoise table is always recommended over a vivarium, but unless the pet shop sells tortoise tables, they won't make any profit on that, and so they recommend vivariums, which they can sell at a good profit. If you could persuade your friend to warn about the dangers of vivariums and either sell tortoise tables or recommend them, that would be a giant step.

What other sorts of reptiles do you keep? I only have an elderly corn snake (she was 22 this year), but am always interested to hear what other people keep.

Feel free to post photos of Alan in the members' photo gallery -- we never get tired of looking at tortoises!

Nina

Nina

Oops, I meant to say that if your friend can't get hold of tortoise tables to sell, the very large indoor rabbit/guinea pig cages make really good tortoise enclosures -- they have a nice deep tray and the wire framework over the top is great for hanging lights from. Something like this (and the larger the better)
http://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/rodents/cages/rabbit_cage (sorry my browser won't let me post live links here). I've got the Galizzi Rodent Cage Mezzo, and I've built a ramp up to a second level at one end, to give more room for exercise.

Nina

Hi nina

Thanks for quick reply im going to take some good pics of alan and post them.

I have a bearded dragon and three geckos at mo. The beardie is called jeff and is just over two years old. The geckos are all females only 6 months old and i cant decide what to call them. I kept musk turtles before that but had to find a new home for them. I had to share a house for a while after a split but they went to a friend and i still see them. Had a corn snake years ago but that only lived about five years. Do you have many tortoises?