Reptile pet advices? With a lifespan as long as that, creating the perfect home is a must! Luckily, these pet tortoises aren’t super picky about decor. They prefer to have edible plants, a burrow-friendly substrate, and some hide boxes. As long as you have those essentials, these reptiles can live happy lives without a care in the world. While not as popular as some of the other best pet tortoises, the Hermann’s tortoise is deserving of your attention! These docile creatures make wonderful pets. They can be a challenge to care for, but the hard work is well worth it!

Fortunately, many pet snakes will accept dead prey. If yours does, consider keeping a separate small freezer for what are delicately called “prey items”. Dead mice and rats of various ages can be purchased in frozen packages through pet supply stores and directly from people who breed “feeder” mice. For health reasons, it is best to keep your snake’s dinner separately from your own foods. Depending on the snake, she might scarf down three or four at one meal, or she might only eat one. You’ll need to keep half a dozen on hand, in any case. Try starting with prey items that are about the same size around the middle as your snake is. If your snake won’t touch dead prey items, try wiggling the meal a bit, to make it move. Also, try putting a piece of fabric over the tank as a “privacy curtain”. Sometimes one or both of those will do the trick. If that fails, you might need to feed your snake live prey. This is more complicated, and not for the faint of heart. You’ll need to watch the snake hunting and killing the larger prey, because it is dangerous to the snake to leave an adult rodent alone with her. The panicked creature could injure the snake with its claws and teeth.

It’s going to be very important to have at least one thermometer in your lizard’s enclosure. This is because you are going to need to maintain a temperature gradient within the enclosure, and using several thermometers will ensure that you are getting the temperatures just right. For your basking area, all you really need is a low watt bulb that is placed outside of the enclosure. Overheating your Mexican alligator lizard can be very dangerous, so make sure that the basking area is not getting above the required temperature. If you are not able to expose your Mexican alligator lizard to natural sunlight, you’ll need to provide supplemental UVB lighting. This can be done using a tubular or a coil UVB bulb. In our opinion, the tubular kind seems to work better, but either one is fine. Use a 12 hours on, 12 hours off schedule for your lighting. This can be ensured quite easily with the use of a timer. See more info at how to care for reptile pets.

Accurate thermometers and thermostats are essential. We recommend using dual probe digital thermometers to monitor the warm part and the cool part of the tank. A source of ultraviolet light, either through exposure to unfiltered, natural sunlight, or an artificial UVB light will help prevent metabolic bone disease. Remember to replace the light regularly (every 6-12 months) as it will lose UV strength, even though it still emits visible light. The enclosure should be large enough for your bluetongue to move around freely and a clean, good quality substrate, replaced regularly, will encourage it to burrow. Be careful of woodchips, coarse sand, kitty litter and tanbark as they often get eaten by mistake and cause impactions. We recommend newspaper or butchers paper as a safer option.

Reaching only five to eight inches as an adult, these pet tortoises don’t need a massive enclosure to stay happy. Furthermore, they are not picky when it comes to decor. In the wild, these tortoises are quite widespread and don’t stick to a specific type of environment. As a result, they do just fine in any well-decorated habitat. This species features a tall and steeply curved carapace. The shell features scutes of rich tan and dark black. The arrangement of the scutes mimics the look of Greek mosaics, which is how these tortoises get their common name. As long as you have a natural-looking setup with edible plants, a tortoise-safe substrate, and some hide boxes, they can thrive in captivity. In terms of temperament, the Greek tortoise is pretty mellow. They are peaceful creatures that don’t cause much trouble. The only exception is when they are living in cramped enclosures. These reptiles aren’t very keen on handling, either! See even more info at here.