Best Substrate for Beardeds???

[chris124578]

Hi everyone,
I im just finishing the building of my new Bearded Dragon home..
It measures 7'l,2.5'd,2'h. I am planning on housing 1 male with 2 or 3 females...
I was wondering what the best substrate to use...
Sand smells too bad in my opinion, paper towel doesnt look nice..
So what can I use...??
Can I use hamster shavings and if so, Aspen, Pine, Cedar??
Thanks for the help!!!!

[Phox]

If you mean best as in safest, I think alot of people would probably say paper towels or newspaper. Before I bought my beardie I was gonna use sand until i did alot of research and came to the conclusion it does much more harm than good. Paper towels or newspaper dont "look cool" but, a few other options you may have is reptile carpeting, coconut husk, or wheat bran. I bought the coconut husk chips and didnt like it much becuase the crickets burrowed in it and my little one couldnt find his lunch. You can also get ground coconut husk substrate like Bed a beast or Eco Earth and its supposed to be much better then the chips. Currently im using paper towels only but will try the ground husk or maybe wheat bran very soon. Im not sure about hamster shavings, maybe someone else can answer that one for ya.

Hope this helps some

[ohh_kristina]

I keep my bearded dragon on reptile carpet. It works great for me. I just wash it once a week, or once every two weeks, and it keeps the smell down. If you don't want to have to wash the carpet, I would go for newspaper or paper towels. Also, I saw on another thread that someone was using mexican styled floor tiles as substrate and that worked great for them. I think it's in the leopard gecko forum. I'm thinking about switching to that.

[Tim and Julie B]

Coconut! You can go to any hydroponics supply shop and buy very large bricks of it for very cheap. It's safe, efficient and they absolutely love it. I recommend it for most digging reptiles. I've never had any problems with it.:D
Julie

[eyespy]

No wood shavings of any kind are safe for beardies. They don't have much acid in their intestines and have trouble breaking it down. They tend to get intestinal bleeding and impactions quite easily from wood shavings, mulches or bark. The high protein content of most wood-based substrates also leaves them prone to fungal respiratory infections.

I like ground coconut husk substrate myself and use paper towels for juveniles or new arrivals that haven't gotten clean fecal exams yet.

[meow_mix450]

NO NO NO NO NO, shavings are the worst thing to put in there tank, my dragon ate some of that stuff, not good. It also depends how old they are, but i pefer to use sand. sand doesnt smell...does it???, only when i spray water, but i dont do that anymore..........But sand has been working for me:)

Meow

[eyespy]

My friend David is a veterinary surgeon who specializes in bowel resections. Sand-impacted beardies account for nearly 1/5 of his practice and he sees up to 100 of them every week. I don't think sand is safe for dragons of any age.