What's the best substrate for your beardie 1+ years

[Lyshha]

Hi , new to this site and wanted everyone's opinion on the best and safest substrate for my male and female dragons . As of now ,they are on crushed walnut shells which I got from my reptile store.. I now know is bad for them . I have done playground sand, reptile sand but I just wanted your opinions on carpet ? I was under the impression that the dragons could get their claws stuck in it . Please let me know what everyone thinks about what would be the best for my dragons !

 

[CooperDragon]

If you have a large enclosure I'd say bioactive substrate is probably best but that takes quite a bit of effort to get started and perfected. It also requires space to build drainage layers so it's not the best option for a lot of enclosures.

I prefer solid substrate for most setups because it's easy to clean and keep sanitized. I use ceramic tile which I can pull out and clean and bake to sanitize. It's cheap and simple. The downside is that the surface is pretty hard. That's not a problem in every case but can be tough on their feet sometimes. I've found that putting some fleece down either as a blanket or as a pile of scraps to burrow in helps provide some relief. The fleece can be thrown in the washer/dryer to clean as needed. Fleece works better when they are trained to poop outside of their tank so it doesn't get soiled frequently.

 

[Drache613]

Moved by Moderator from General to Enclosures

 

[charmander16]

Crushed Walnut is perhaps the worst possible substrate, so get them off of that ASAP.

Tile, rock, cork are all good solid substrates. Newspaper, paper towels, shelf paper are all good disposable types.

I use a mix of cork and rock.