BEST Juvenile TORTOISE HABITAT! (Easy & Beautiful!)

[Music] this critically endangered Madagascar radiated tortoise is finishing covering her nest right now so I gotta dig up her eggs because they'll never hatch alone like this and put them into incubation and then we're going to get to something really fun we're gonna put together the easiest most simple tortoise enclosure ever and we're gonna have some fun today so let me grab these eggs and we're gonna get on over to the nature room and start putting this thing together thank you foreign [Music] beautiful eggs from this hard-working mama can't wait to see the babies there's so many different ways that people consider to be the right way to keep tortoises you can go on and on and on about it sometimes going simple is better than doing something elaborate and sometimes it's really what you have to do a couple months back if you click this link above me you can watch the original video we did on the AV tube and tortoise house in it I suggested making some improvements well the manufacturer has decided to do that and they just sent us their new and improved tortoise house which we're going to set up and review for you guys okay ow [Music] uh don't do that okay so the first thing I want to bring up right here as I open this thing up is the size of it this is not a very big enclosure it's 38 inches by almost 23 inches by 13 inches as far as height goes so you don't want to put too much in this and you also are absolutely not going to want to house a large animal in this this enclosure as I stated in the first video we did is most suitable for juvenile tortoises now why juvenile well an adult is going to be way too big to fit in this for life and hatchlings need sufficient humidity which you're not going to gain with an enclosure like this that's made out of wood particularly cedar wood now remember Cedar Wood when an enclosure is made out of that that is safe you don't want to use cedar bedding so if you're thinking to yourself well I thought Cedar wasn't safe for Animals the bedding is not the wood excellent choice foreign the color of this enclosure is a beautiful gray I really like what they did here a lot of times when you get the cedar frame or Cedar based enclosures they are just kind of you know the exposed wood or just um stained a little bit which they're nice too but I really love that they stain this thing gray as you can see in here we love using gray enclosures I love the smell of it too let's get these panels off to the side here's the base and this is one of my favorite features of this tortoise house they give you a plastic tray that is built into the cedar base what's nice about this it enables you to keep the substrate moist because you don't have to worry about the moisture in the bottom of the enclosure a lot of the other ones that are similar to this design don't come with the plastic tray so you got to worry about moisture in it and of course tortoises contrary to popular belief absolutely need moisture in their substrate to stay healthy so there you go one of my favorite parts of this enclosure okay to give you all the hardware and then an instruction manual aha here we go here is the new and improved feature for lighting this was what I had an issue with in the very first review of this enclosure they gave us it was like a wooden bracket that just was fixed on the side and you couldn't swivel it or anything and so when you went to open up the top of the enclosure you would have hit the lamp you would have actually had to remove the lamp and then you know move it out of the way and open up the top so um we're gonna see how this one works out because this is a much more practical piece for lighting over any kind of reptile enclosure here's the beautiful lid with the screen on top okay and we've got just our last few pieces here we've got one of the side panels look both side panels we've got the entrance to the hide the top for the end where the hide is with the hardware already partially installed and some more pieces to our light bracket so let's put this box together [Music] just getting a little refresher here on how to put this together and uh you know like I said it's simple so we're going to attach c d and e panels to the front panel which is this one and of course your front panel has this Plexiglas front you just got to take the plastic the protective plastic off it and that is my second favorite thing about the av2 and tortoise house so let's start with uh see [Music] pegs go right in he takes the screws [Applause] which ones though which one's the one I want P2 screws these are P2 screws a word of caution these are not the strongest screws so you're really just supposed to use a regular Phillips head screwdriver um I lack something called patience so I'm using power tools Dale no power tools just just do it easily so you don't strip anything and we're in this is your middle panel which is going to be the entrance to the hide [Music] all right now we're just going to put in the back panel foreign [Music] okay here's panel B this is the other side and as you can see we are starting to look like a box [Music] all right now you flip it over foreign we're going to put on the base this wonderful base it allows us to keep moisture inside this enclosure now this enclosure can actually be used for other reptiles such as young iguanas we actually started the entire clutch of rhinocerosaguanas we hatched over the summer from Rocky and blue our adults in one of these and they really did awesome you know iguanas kind of have a similar ecology to tortoises in terms of the environments that they live in especially ground iguanas and even what they eat so these are pretty effective in getting your baby iguana started and they can't get out of it because it's got the screen lid and Hardware that locks in place foreign [Music] flipping it back over and you know this is a good time for me to bring up how wonderfully light this enclosure is this thing awesome to pick up no problems we are going to go ahead and put the lids on this unit has two lids it has the screen lid which is the main lid here where the lighting can go and then this entire portion is the hiding area for whatever you're going to keep in here which is crucial reptiles need to feel secure and have Refuge at all times because a stressed out reptile becomes a sick reptile very quickly and stress believe it or not is the number one killer of reptiles even captain bregolins the whole thing behind this unit is the Simplicity of it which is awesome you're really putting in very few screws to complete the whole installment um and most of the screw holes are already pre-drilled for you except for the hardware ones which being that it's cedar wood it just goes in so easily see that no problems just put a little bit of pressure and the screw goes right in remember you don't want to go overboard you don't want to split anything and you don't want to strip the screw heads all right so we're putting the latches on this part is all about you just eyeballing it but again it's very simple just want to make sure that it's going to be able to latch properly and try to keep it as level as possible put in one screw at a time and just kind of take a step back and look because especially you know if you're gonna keep something like young lizards in here like the young Rhino iguanas you want to make sure that it does latch securely so that they can't get out okay Moment of Truth we're gonna start assembling the Improvement they made based on my suggestions from the last time we reviewed this enclosure and that is the new lamp holder starting with little pieces of hardware all right this is the top part of the lamp holder you just simply screw it into this little platform that they made for it make sure it's flush and as even as possible [Music] and you go then we've got the bottom part and what's going to happen is this is gonna you know be in line with this but it's going to go on the bottom towards the bottom of the enclosure and the tube is going to fit over this that is going to be that L bracket that the light hangs down from so what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to grab this part which is the bottom part of the light tubing and this will help you to line up the bottom piece there you want it to fit over that and now you're perfectly lined up with both pieces so you can go ahead and just screw this one in and it won't be uneven okay now we can put the rest of this thing together so this thing really is an improvement from the last Model uh it's got pins see that so you can adjust the height of this holder push it in to me that's going to be too tall for what I want to use so I just go lower and lower until I am satisfied okay one last piece which also has an adjustable pin up here is where your light is actually going to hang from oops and I'm gonna want it all the way over where's the pen okay so there is the holder if you go to open the lid you still come in contact with the lamp holder that's a problem right aha not with this model this one swivels out of the way now you can freely and easily and safely open up the top to the AV tube and tortoise house and check on your animals change their water bowls their food dishes swap out or turn over substrate or just get a good look at them so Bravo AV tubing that's a nice addition you can move this a little bit if you want the lamp a little bit further towards the back and also with this this is still up pretty high if you're using a high wattage Bowl then you can keep the lamp higher otherwise you can you can include a chain and the chain will actually attach to this hook here's your hook right here and enable you to hang the light a little bit lower which I'm going to show you what I mean right now I do want to point out that as you can tell there's nothing that can really be done with the wire some of the other similar L bracket type light holders will have clips that will fit the wire into place and keep it as such so that's one recommendation I would make is that they could either maybe in a different model in the future add clips for the wire but you can also wrap it like I'm doing here or you could just simply zip tie it you can get black zip ties so it Blends in and you don't really notice it but you know it's about the best you could do with that for now make sure you don't actually Kink a wire though that's an electrical disaster right there this is what I was mentioning earlier if you want the light to go lower you can simply get a piece of chain cut to size attach it to the hook up here and then also attach it to this piece that holds the light and then you can get the light a little bit closer if you want if your wattage isn't that high you know if you're in a warmer room you're obviously not going to want to blast whatever you have in this enclosure with like a 250 watt brooder lamp you're going to want to use probably a 75 to 100 watt basking lamp and again you can move this a little bit and you can put slate rocks directly underneath it on top of the substrate that will enable the reptile that you're housing in here to reach optimal activity levels by getting as warm as it needs to and also you're going to want to use a light that has full spectrum you're going to want UVB and UVA which means a mercury vapor bulb is going to be your best bet there Arcadia zoomed and other reptile companies make them and they are very good but change them every three months instead of every six now as I said this is not a very big enclosure if you need something to suffice for housing a tortoise or even maybe an iguana that's getting to be a little bit bigger before it needs a really large enclosure uh more space you can actually join these together you can get a second or even third ab2 of an enclosure and you can join them and they send you the brackets that go on either side already with a couple extra screws and when you look at the diagram right here all it is is removing one side panel putting two of them together throwing these brackets on with some screws you can reinforce it some more with yourself if you have wood glue or whatever else and then you've got uh way more room for the animal that you were housing all right now the fun part we're going to decorate this thing we're going to make it very standard for indoor tortoise housing whether it's temporary or semi long term and we're going to use a substrate of both cypress mulch and Eco Earth these are two safe substrates I don't have any sand on me at the moment to add to this but I always like to add some sand to a tortoise's enclosure because contrary to popular belief as I told you guys in many many of our videos sand is a natural component found in just about every single tortoise's habitat across the globe and it is important don't believe all the impaction stuff it's all in how you feed the animals which you can see in many of our other videos [Music] so this is really good stuff it's safe it retains moisture makes for a semi-naturalistic ground for a lot of species but you do have to keep up with it you have to make sure it stays moist no tortoise that is in a younger stage of life that's hatchling through juvenile can be subjected to prolonged periods of being too dry because that is what causes improper growth all those pyramid tortoises you're seeing out there with the lumpy shells that is from lack of sufficient hydration and actually an improper diet is secondary however of course an improper diet has very detrimental effects internally on the tortoise foreign foreign here's how you also give your tortoises sufficient hydration you give them a nice sized water dish that they can not only drink from but also fit their bodies into so they can soak because that is important and is something that all species will do in the wild remember even desert or air dwelling species seek out humidity and wet areas whenever they can they've simply adapted to the environment that they live in that they absolutely do still need sufficient levels of moisture and hydration as much as possible so we've got a nice sized water dish in here one that they are able to walk in and out of easily and you just change that daily no need to go Fancy with the food dish all you need is the lid to a tupperware container or Deli container if you want to do something fancy or fine but you can change these every day by just throwing them out or simply clean them there you go that's where your tortoise can eat off we've got a fully hidden area thanks to AB tubing's design of this enclosure I'm going to make it a little bit more secure for tortoises because if you know anything about them they love to just find the darkest most secure areas where they can feel completely alone and unbothered so I've got a little cave here and I'm sticking this in the back corner and I'm also going to throw some chopped straw back here for added cover remember even the most vividly colored or marked tortoise species can blend in without problem in their natural environments because while they look conspicuous to us they are adapted to stay hidden from predation so by adding extra things like this something as simple as chopped straw you're making that tortoise feel safe and it can actually be pretty hidden this is one of my personal little tricks that I love to use indoors for smaller tortoises or younger tortoises because it adds both Aesthetics makes things great to look at and it also adds even more cover for the animals you just take a piece of Flagstone or slate and a fake plant like this Fern right here yes they are perfectly safe and actually better in some cases than live because all tortoises are going to do is mow down and eat anything live and you just do something like this here pick a corner pull the substrate back damn this in cover it back with the substrate and now what you have is an area that the animal can go underneath but bask at the same time young tortoises even adults will do this they will use the edge of some kind of vegetation in their habitat and just expose the right amount of their carapace to the Sun so they're staying hidden but getting warmed up at the exact same time take a couple more pieces of Flagstone and place them on top of the substrate right underneath the Basking light and you create a nice area that a tortoise can warm up fast on because the rocks are going to retain that heat [Music] so here are the two inhabitants of this new AV tube and enclosure these are two young radiated tortoises that we've been raising since they were hatchlings they're going to be three this year and they're the perfect example of the size tortoise that will work in here these are juveniles they've passed the fragile stage so humidity and moisture while still important are not as crucial as they are for a little fragile hatchling these tortoises cannot spend their entire lives on one of these enclosures though and even if you were to marry two of them together like I showed you earlier it's still not enough room for an adult radiated tortoises can grow to be upwards of 16 to 18 inches so like I said in the last video we did with av2 and it's like a middle school for them it's a time period for them to spend their juvenile years before they get to sub adult size and then of course adult size so for now this enclosure it's fine the way it is for these two but probably by next year I would want to put two of them together to give them double that amount of size these two right here are an example of what you don't want to house in one of these enclosures and that is because babies little hatchlings like these require very high levels of humidity and moisture so these do better in more of a closed chamber that we're gonna end up doing another video on so while they're in this fragile stage something that's really open aired like this is not going to be sufficient enough for them unless you truly can keep up with keeping this thing humid and borderline damp for babies remember baby tortoises seek out microclimates that are always humid and they spend 90 percent of their time in there only coming out to bask just a little bit when they're partially exposed they do a little bit of grazing and then they go right back to hiding it's not until they become much larger and less vulnerable that they venture out more and at that point the shell has grown pretty smoothly if not perfectly and humidity is less important once your tortoises start growing out of that three to four inch juvenile size that is suitable for one of these AV tubings and they start approaching size is like this with this little South African leopard tortoise and I say little because this thing's Gonna Get huge it's time to upgrade it's time to start thinking about putting two of these together or even expanding all together obviously tortoises should get outdoor time if not even hibernate out there if they are a species that hibernates like a Herman's tortoise for example but for indoor keeping these enclosures are suitable as long as you're doing it for the right age and size animal really any tortoise species that's in the three to four or even five inch bracket can work with one or two ab tubing enclosures but some tortoises such as the Northern Hemisphere smallest species of tortoise which is the Egyptian tortoise can actually spend their entire lives in there just one male that may grow to be only three and a half four inches can live in just one of these but of course if you could put two together then you could do a pair or maybe even three but all together this a pretty cool unit we are constantly evolving here we're always doing more in this room our nature room our reptile room we're always building enclosures making sure animals are set up properly and these units really come in handy because you know what if they're not going to be a permanent fixture maybe you're a rescue maybe you need kind of a hospital area for certain animals and these enclosures are great because they're compact they keep the animal safely contained in a Humane Manner and you know you even have visual barriers here so this isn't like a fish tank where the animal is constantly stressed out by trying to get out because it doesn't understand the concept behind glass so I want to say to AB tuben thank you because it's very rare that a company that makes any product will take advice and actually make improvements all I had to do was mention what I didn't like about the light stand that they used in the original design for this and they changed it immediately sent it right out and asked us to do another review so that says a lot about a company that means that they're always trying to evolve and always trying to do better for the animals and the people taking care of the animals whether you're a rescue a zoo a private breeding facility a conservation entity you want to be able to make sure that you are taking care of your animals as best as you can and keeping them safe and secure that's first and foremost so these really are solid units that um they go a long way the fact that you could put two together you can even put them outside all great stuff so if you want to get yourself an AB tube or two toward his house use the code that we're gonna put in the description of this video to get a discount and get this product right away so maybe you could write your own review or just start getting your experience with it for your animals but I was clear about what you should house in this if you start trying to house hatchling tortoises you might run into problems unless you really can keep them human and moist at all times so there you go that's the AV tube and tortoise house they have plenty of other animal enclosures you can check out and don't forget the link to purchase one of these is in the description so go check that out as soon as you're done watching this [Music]

Channel: Garden State Tortoise

Views: 28,579

Keywords: pet reptile care tips, pet tortoise care tips, aivituvin tortoise house, garden state tortoise, otis box turtle, red foot tortoise, snapping turtle farm, box turtle, pet turtle, alligator snapping turtle, snapping turtle vs, Egyptian tortoise, Russian tortoise, eastern box turtle, tortoise, hermann's tortoise, box turtle closing its shell, reptile cages, reptile habitat, reptile habitat build, keeping tortoise indoors, tortoise enclosure, easy tortoise care

Id: 0PJ9EP05JrE

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2023