playsand

[depressor86]

does it need to be washed and strained before being put into the tank?

[eyespy]

Most playsand is already washed and so you only need to sift out any clumps or pebbles.

I just want to mention that I hate playsand! I saw over 600 deaths from playsand impaction in the last 5 years I was a veterinary surgical tech. We didn't keep computerized records before then so I can't begin to estimate how many I've seen over the 17 years I worked in vet hospitals but it's probably well above 4,000.

Here's a picture of the sand my vet and I flushed out of a 5 week old who had been kept on playsand at her breeders. She would probably have slowly starved to death over a period of 3 to 5 years from the amount of sand blocking nutrient absorption in her intestines.

<img src="http://www.thebeardedlady.org/images/sand.jpg">

Bed-a-beast, wheat bran, alfalfa pellets, or reptile carpeting are all lower-risk options.

[reptilez]

What do u like best that makes the enclosure look good and is good for your BD

[depressor86]

what about a sand/soil mix? or is there anyway to create a sun baked like ground in a tank?
newspaper is always an option but its a really big tank and it will be hard to clean all of it everyday.

[eyespy]

Sun-baked tanks tend to tick beardies off! They love to dig little wallows to sleep in and so they'll dig up the crust, crumble it and it's a much bigger impaction risk than plain sand because of the clumps.

I use bed-a-beast myself. It's dark brown and looks like soil but is almost pure cellulose which dissolves completely in 5% hydrochloric acid, the best test we have for substrate safety. I've never tested wheat bran because I don't have a feed store nearby but I'd assume that is equally safe. Both are light and fluffy and beardies enjoy digging in it, moreso than sand or soil.

Newspaper is the quickest and easiest to clean. You just roll it up and put down new. Much quicker than all the sifting that sand needs. It's a major challenge keeping playsand totally clean. The poop is easy to scoop but the urea (wet portion) soaks into the sand so you've got to dig out whole areas of the tank around each poop if you want to avoid bad smells and bacteria growth. Bed-a-beast forms clumps kind of like the scoopable kitty litter so it's easier to keep clean, but harder to find the poop because it's practically the same color.

[reptilez]

is this the same as bed a beast: http://www.superpet.com/shoppingcart%20database/shopreptile.html

[depressor86]

wouldnt bed a beast make controlling humidity difficult?

[eyespy]

Once bed-a-beast is thoroughly dry it resists moisture and keeping a low-humidity tank is as easy as with sand, newpaper or reptile carpeting.

It's tough to see whether the Forest Bed is exactly the same or not. Coconut husk substrates come in 2 forms, shredded or chips. The chips are not as safe as little hunks of the hard shell are often found it in. If it's the shredded form of just the fibrous stuff that covers the shell of a coconut it's the same as bed-a-beast.

If they had a picture I could tell you in a flash! T-rex makes both the shreds and the chips though so with just a description it's hard to say. The way it mentions fibers it's probably the shredded kind and okay but who knows?