Paper Towels VS ReptiCarpet

[RadioactiveInertia]

Which do you prefer?
And does repticarpet even come for thirty gallon tanks?

What do you suggest is easier to clean. For paper towels, I just layer them up in sections so I can swoop in to save the day by rolling up the sections with poop on them. It's very quick, but it gets annoying when dragons decide to run through that specific area.
With repticarpet I assume you have to machine wash them, but there's no way my mother is about to let that happen. How hard would it be to handwash?
About the 16 inch limit on sand, is that snout to vent length or including the tail? I'm not about to use sand (I imagine it would be a pain to scoop out when I have to give the tank it's monthly run down) but it's not clear to me when I run across the term.

 

[Nixiemaiden]

Another good one is non adhesive shelf liner. It is cheap and easy. I just wipe up the poop first with dry paper towel, then with antibacterial wipe, then with wet paper towel. Once a week I steam clean it.

Do you know the length and width of your tank? The max width I have seen for these rolls is like 18 inches but they are really long...definitely more than enough for a 30 gallon tank.

 

[clossboss]

ive never used repticarpet but i got fed up with paper towels....i find it much easier to just wipe off my tiles with baby wipes instead of taking everything out and changing paper towels everyday

 

[jodyberry]

Which do you prefer?

I prefer indoor/outdoor carpet. Look at this pic: http://jodyberry.smugmug.com/Vivarium/Vivarium/15140299_rHK5c6#1131996195_WgkWN


For $20 I got enough to make 3 floor carpets (for each of my vivs) plus 6 additional spares. So when I have to take them out to clean, I just pop in a spare. Then in the meantime I hang the dirty ones up outside and hose them down.

Plus, I made some hammocks with the spare material and they love laying in them!!

 

[RadioactiveInertia]

Which do you prefer?

I prefer indoor/outdoor carpet. Look at this pic: http://jodyberry.smugmug.com/Vivarium/Vivarium/15140299_rHK5c6#1131996195_WgkWN


For $20 I got enough to make 3 floor carpets (for each of my vivs) plus 6 additional spares. So when I have to take them out to clean, I just pop in a spare. Then in the meantime I hang the dirty ones up outside and hose them down.

Plus, I made some hammocks with the spare material and they love laying in them!!

oooh, that sounds like a good idea!

 

[TJinPgh]

Which do you prefer?
And does repticarpet even come for thirty gallon tanks?

What do you suggest is easier to clean. For paper towels, I just layer them up in sections so I can swoop in to save the day by rolling up the sections with poop on them. It's very quick, but it gets annoying when dragons decide to run through that specific area.
With repticarpet I assume you have to machine wash them, but there's no way my mother is about to let that happen. How hard would it be to handwash?
About the 16 inch limit on sand, is that snout to vent length or including the tail? I'm not about to use sand (I imagine it would be a pain to scoop out when I have to give the tank it's monthly run down) but it's not clear to me when I run across the term.

I use the repticarpet myself, though there's nothing wrong with paper towels.

For larger tanks you just buy the larger roll and cut it to size. It's fine if they overlap as well.

For cleaning it's simple enough to clean them by hand. You'll find that very little sticks to them. I put mine in a bucket of hot water with a couple of drops of baby shampoo then rinse them well to get the soap out. Shake them out and hang them over the shower rod or towel bar for a half hour or so and you're good to go.

They're made from recycled plastic bottles so they're not actually made from yarn or cloth fibers like normal carpet. So, they dry pretty quickly if you don't have a backup set.

If you shake them out after rinsing by the time you get the rest of the tank clean they'll probably be dry.

The non-adhesive shelf liner is also a good idea. Very easy to clean. You can get a big roll of it at most box stores pretty cheap.

I've always been curious, though, about whatever fumes might be given off by heating such products under a heat lamp. Never heard anything about it, though.

Regarding the indoor-outdoor carpet... I was under the impression that this wasn't recommended for beardies as they have a tendancy to get their nails caught in the fibers. Has this advice changed?

 

[jodyberry]

Regarding the indoor-outdoor carpet... I was under the impression that this wasn't recommended for beardies as they have a tendancy to get their nails caught in the fibers. Has this advice changed?

Well, I use the lowest nap indoor/outdoor carpet (most of them are quite low anyway), and I've had 5 beardies using it for over a year and I haven't once seen them get stuck in it.

 

[RadioactiveInertia]

I use the repticarpet myself, though there's nothing wrong with paper towels.

For larger tanks you just buy the larger roll and cut it to size. It's fine if they overlap as well.

For cleaning it's simple enough to clean them by hand. You'll find that very little sticks to them. I put mine in a bucket of hot water with a couple of drops of baby shampoo then rinse them well to get the soap out. Shake them out and hang them over the shower rod or towel bar for a half hour or so and you're good to go.

They're made from recycled plastic bottles so they're not actually made from yarn or cloth fibers like normal carpet. So, they dry pretty quickly if you don't have a backup set.

If you shake them out after rinsing by the time you get the rest of the tank clean they'll probably be dry.

The non-adhesive shelf liner is also a good idea. Very easy to clean. You can get a big roll of it at most box stores pretty cheap.

I've always been curious, though, about whatever fumes might be given off by heating such products under a heat lamp. Never heard anything about it, though.

Regarding the indoor-outdoor carpet... I was under the impression that this wasn't recommended for beardies as they have a tendancy to get their nails caught in the fibers. Has this advice changed?

I would not not not be able to use indoor/outdoor carpet because just looking at the texture sends off so many wrong signals... my beardies won't have time to get their nails caught in fibers if they are nonexistent.
Reading about the cleaning of repticarpet, it's probably a lot less wastefull than however many rolls of papertowels I go through. Still, I may be finding myself drowning the thing everyday. I could have a backup set and have the other dry up over night.

I need to make a schedule for the thing.

 

[arpooch]

ReptiCarpet actually works very well for me. I highly suggest it. I have two of them of the same size, and while one is dirty, I replace it and wash the other.

 

[TJinPgh]

Radioactive, one thing that you didn't mention (and if you did I missed it) was how old your beardie is.

Younger beardies eat substantially more than the older ones. So, naturally, they go a lot more.

My Gertrude is to the point now that I only have to wash her carpet maybe twice a week. Often times not even that as she has a tendency to do her duty on her rocks which is easy enough to simply remove and scrub off.

Otherwise, she simply waits and goes when she gets a bath.

Of course, she's been going through a brumation cycle where she's really only picking at her food so she's lucky if she's even going until she gets her bathes.

At any rate, the point is that what you may want to use with a baby or Juvie might be different from what you end up using as an adult. But, like I said, the carpet is easy enough to clean and safe for any age.

Plus, like I said, mine is in 3 pieces. So, no need to remove the whole thing if only one small section is dirty.

 

[TJinPgh]

Well, I use the lowest nap indoor/outdoor carpet (most of them are quite low anyway), and I've had 5 beardies using it for over a year and I haven't once seen them get stuck in it.

Jody, I'm glad it's worked out for you. I've personally never used it to know either way and you're certainly not the first to use it. I was simply under the understanding that the community, in general, really preferred something else.

If that's not the case I gladly stand corrected.

 

[RadioactiveInertia]

Radioactive, one thing that you didn't mention (and if you did I missed it) was how old your beardie is.

Younger beardies eat substantially more than the older ones. So, naturally, they go a lot more.

Oh...
Oh right... :"D

I didn't think that would important...

Okay,
They are around 3 months old.

 

[jodyberry]

I was simply under the understanding that the community, in general, really preferred something else.

If that's not the case I gladly stand corrected.

In my opinion there's a few basic guidelines, but ultimately it's what works for you. As a noob a while ago, I tried to learn as much of the "correct" things to do, but if I strayed from that even in the least, I'd usually get blasted by some "professionals" on the board. If it works for you and your beardies are seemingly happy and healthy, then go with it.

For example, when I first built my vivs, they were taller than they were deep (due to location constraints). Yet I got blasted because "beardies need more floor space than climbing space". Well, as it turned out, my beardies absolutely love the huge branches I have in my viv. They sleep and play on them, and actually spend quite a bit more time on the branches than the floor!!

My 2 cents...

 

[TJinPgh]

Radioactive,
Well, they're still eating quite a bit at that age. Typically, you don't see them start to slow down until they're adults... at least a year or so, I'd think?

So, figure that whatever you're going to use you're going to have to clean it relatively frequently for a while yet. So, you may want to take that into consideration.

I bought the repticarpert for a baby, but it turned out that the baby was ill and didn't survive long enough for me to have a really good basis of comparison on how much upkeep it is compared to an adult. I just know that, in and of itself, it's not hard to clean and if you have an extra set it wouldn't be difficult at all to keep up with, I'd think.

jodyberry,
I guess the lesson here is that our beardies is as individual as we are so nothing is 100% true for everybody.

When I bought Gertrude she was already an adult and she is missing a nail on one of her front toes which never grew back. I admit that I didn't notice it when I bought her but I'm fairly certain it didn't happen here. She was housed with two others in a small viv so it could have been nipped. They kept them on sand, I think.

Not good all the way around.

In general, all we can do is tell people what we use and why. I think we all strive to minimize anything negative but there's no accounting for what our beardies themselves want or like.