- Today I'm finally dedicating a video
to why sand is a bad reptile substrate
by responding to the 10
most popular arguments
from people that use it,
including sand is only bad
if your husbandry is wrong,
many animals are naturally on sand,
many animals have done
really well on sand,
my animal's on sand and
has no signs of impaction
but I'll move it off the sand
if it starts to show those signs,
only calcium sand is bad,
other types of sand are okay,
reptiles won't get impaction
if you tong feed them,
bowl feed them, or have a non-sand area
where they can eat, it's
fine if you take your snake
out of the enclosure to feed it,
coarse sand is bad,
very fine sand is okay,
sand mixes are fine, like
coconut fiber and sand,
and you need sand for
bioactive enclosures.
Sand is this product that's marketed
to animals all the time from
pretty much every big company.
And it says it's perfect
for just about every
animal on planet Earth,
as pretty much every
package does at this point.
And they never mention impaction,
which, in context to sand and animals,
is when one of an animal's organs or guts
or intestinal tracts are
completely clogged up
to the point that nothing can pass.
Once an animal is impacted,
it is extremely hard
to get it through them
and to get them to actually clear out
so that they can continue to
eat or pass waste or anything,
and it pretty much always leads to death
once it gets too bad.
Impaction doesn't just come from sand.
They can be impacted
from consuming too much
of just about anything.
Too many of hard exoskeletons from insects
has caused impaction before.
And accidentally eating large quantities
of other types of substrate
has also led to this.
For example, animals have been impacted
by things like coconut fiber before,
but it's a lot more rare
because it can be broken
down by the animal
since it's not the same material as sand.
Sand is usually made from quartz
or other very hard materials
that can technically be broken down
by stomach acids over time,
but it takes a super long time.
Take coconut fiber for example.
It literally comes from coconuts.
Say even aspen or something,
aspen is a soft wood substrate.
Both of these materials are a lot softer
and although they shouldn't
really be digested,
they can actually be digested
in very small quantities
because they're softer and
break down more quickly.
Sand, on the other hand, is super hard
and does not exactly
break down the same way.
Another reason that impaction happens
so frequently with sand
is think about how sand actually acts.
When it's dry, it's very soft,
it just runs through your
fingers, and it's pretty messy.
But as soon as you add water,
it starts to stick together and glob up
into a material that you can actually mold
and hold in your hand.
And this is basically what happens
inside an animal's stomach.
It's dry on the surface.
The animal somehow ingests it,
and goes into its mouth
and down its throat,
and all of those moistures,
the saliva, the stomach acids,
and anything, the mucuses lining
its body, all of that stuff
is going to absorb within
the sand and make it stick.
And once it sticks, it's pretty stuck.
There are ways to try
and alleviate impaction,
both the DIY methods at home
and veterinarians can go in
and literally just cut your animal open
and take the sand out, but
this is extremely invasive.
Doing surgery on reptiles
is extremely expensive.
And they're very small animals,
so putting any small animal
on anesthesia is a pretty
high risk for death.
For that reason,
you should hopefully
try and avoid impaction.
But there are tons of people
who say that impaction
does not have to be caused by sand,
and we can now get into
those 10 arguments.
Let's start with the first argument
which is probably the
most popular one I see,
and that is an animal
will only get impacted
if your husbandry is incorrect.
Now, first I'm going to talk about this
assuming that this is true.
Because reptiles aren't extremely popular,
it's really hard to find
actual convincing evidence
of these things, but,
again, let's talk about this
assuming this is actually what's true.
So when we talk about incorrect husbandry,
we're talking about how
you care for an animal
and what you're doing wrong
that may lead to problems
with their quality of
life and their lifespan.
For example, I keep my leopard geckos
at 90 degrees in their hot spot,
which is the area that they
can go to if they get cold.
They can warm up here.
We use heat mats and heat tape
so that they can heat their bellies up,
and it's also widely known
that leopard geckos do the best
when they have under-tank
heating instead of over-heating.
Although heating above them can work,
leopard geckos seem to digest food best
when they have that warm beneath them.
The temperature is just
right for their tummy
to help break down and
pass those materials
through their body.
And let's say somebody
has their temperature
at 85 degrees instead of 90.
This is a number I made up,
since, again, there's
not much hard evidence
to convince me one way or the other
of what the actual number would be.
But let's say this five degree difference
from 90 degrees down to 85 is the variable
that can potentially give
your animal impaction.
It's just five degrees too cold
and the animal is going to have trouble
passing a little bit of sand
that builds up in it over time.
Well, let's think about the other issues
with that five degree difference.
Maybe the animal would be just
a tiny bit less comfortable
at 85 versus 90, but most
likely a leopard gecko
wouldn't even think about that.
They don't think of the potential of,
oh, I wish I was five degrees warmer.
They just find the warmest spot.
And let's say it does take
them just a little bit longer
to digest foods on that 85 degree hot spot
than the 90 degree hot spot.
Overall, it's not big changes,
and it's not really that important
except for when it comes to impaction.
If the only danger in having
a five degree too cool
of a hot spot is an animal
potentially gets impacted,
I see it as a lot easier to
just change the substrate out
with something that has very
low chances of impaction,
like tile, for example, which
we really like to use now.
Tile doesn't peel up, there's
no part of it they can eat.
Paper towel, theoretically
they could take a bite of it,
but most likely they wouldn't,
and they're not going to ingest any of it.
But then, meanwhile, sand,
maybe they will start
to ingest little bits,
which we'll get into how
they would do this and why,
and then they get impacted
because your temperature
is just five degrees too low.
And this could go with any variable.
For another example, let's
switch to Kenyan sand boas,
which they literally
have sand in their name.
Let's say humidity's the variable
that affects whether they get
impacted or not from the sand.
If your humidity is way
too high for a sand boa,
you may see scale rot starting to develop,
your animal may develop
a respiratory infection,
because it's just not the right amount
of moisture in the air.
But let's just say it's just
a minor humidity difference
of just a few percent,
maybe five, 10, or 15%.
10% off won't really affect anything else,
but if this is the variable
that can risk your
animal getting impaction
and there's no other risks
to that 10% difference,
it would be so much easier
just to take the sand out.
So why not just do that?
And then, if your
counterargument to that is,
well, it has to be that big difference.
It has to be a 20 degree difference
or it has to be a 15% humidity difference
or something like that.
Well, your animal's going to
show a lot of other issues
other than just impaction
because we ourselves,
we've gotten very healthy animals
that show no signs of poor humidity,
no signs of incorrect temperatures,
and yet they still come impacted
because they were on sand,
most frequently with leopard geckos,
and you can find images of this.
The animal looks healthy
except for the fact that it's impacted.
So logically it would make sense
for it to show signs of other issues
other than just impaction
if it was those extreme
differences in husbandry
that actually gave them impaction.
Well, animals are naturally on sand,
for example, leopard geckos.
This is the most common animal
that I hear is naturally on sand,
and this one is just not correct.
They're from Afghanistan.
And although I'm sure there's
sand in the environment,
sand is all over the place,
keeping a leopard gecko
straight on 100% sand
is different than a leopard
gecko that is in an environment
with maybe 5% of the substrate being sand.
For leopard geckos specifically,
their substrate in the wild
is mostly very rocky stuff
which is oddly similar to tile.
Or let's go to an animal
that is actually on sand,
for example, back to sand boas.
They bury in sand, believe it or not.
And sand, for certain species,
are a much bigger part of the environment.
Well, you have to keep in mind
there is a reason that almost
every species of animal
lives longer in captivity
with good husbandry
than it does in the wild.
You can remove risks and decrease risks.
For example, there's no
predators in an enclosure.
Hopefully.
Meanwhile, there are predators outside.
Snakes are a big source of
food for many birds of prey.
But you likely don't
have any birds of prey
in your enclosure, so the
likelihood of your snake
dying from a bird eating it is very low.
And then in comparison,
look at sand, for example.
Just because animals are on sand naturally
doesn't mean the occasional animal
does not get impacted from said sand.
Again, this is another thing
that has not much research
and not much evidence around it
'cause it's just not
quite a big enough thing
for people to research
and study and make budgets
for when they go out on
these big research studies
and different environments
for different animals.
But those are the things to
keep in mind when someone says
that because an animal's
naturally on something
or naturally doing something
then that automatically
means it's the right thing,
'cause that's not true.
We've seen many examples
of animals in captivity
that have different
care or different setups
than they would naturally and
yet they still live for longer
than they would in the wild.
Well, many animals have done well on sand,
like I've heard of leopard geckos
that live their full 15, 20 plus years,
and they lived on sand
forever, so what about those?
Well, just because you
keep your animal on sand
doesn't give you a 100% chance
of it getting impaction.
If I were to take a
completely random guess
off the top of my head,
I would say it's the minority of animals
that actually get impacted, less than 50%.
Whether it's 5% or 45%, I'm not sure.
But I do think it would
be the minority of them.
With that said, I don't
see the point in risking it
if there is that chance.
Again, not everything
is going to be perfect
in an enclosure.
Teeny-tiny variables that make a,
a 1% difference in the likelihood
of your animal getting
sick or getting hurt,
in the long, grand scheme of things,
doesn't make a big difference,
especially if it takes a lot
of work to make those changes.
But in the case of sand, it's
literally just taking it out
and putting in one of your
many other substrate options,
and that's a huge risk decreased.
So I totally believe that
there are plenty of animals
that have done amazing on sand.
But that doesn't mean
they're all gonna do well.
Well, my animal's been on sand
and it looks completely fine,
but if starts to show signs of impaction,
I will happily move it off
as soon as I notice it.
And this is great,
it's good that you are a proactive keeper,
but the signs of impaction
are pretty minimal.
You may start to see slight
growth in their stomach.
And with leopard geckos, for example,
because their bellies are
so thin and so see-through,
you can actually often see the sand
using a flashlight or
even just your bare eye.
Say they're on black sand,
if you see a large black mass
that wasn't there before,
it's probably sand.
And the thing is sand can
often build up over time.
And it can be a very gradual thing.
But in the many cases
that you can find online
with different pictures and stuff,
and with the animals
that we've gotten in here
that show signs of impaction,
it's always too late for them
because it's built up so much.
Just because you see a sign of impaction
doesn't mean there's time to fix it.
And more likely than not,
seeing a sign of impaction
is a sign that it's too late,
which is why I think
you should be proactive
and remove it before
those signs even show up.
But, again, maybe your animal
would do perfectly fine on the sand.
That's not a risk that I
recommend that you take.
Well, only calcium sand is bad,
when the other sands are fine.
Calcium sand is made
from calcium carbonate
and it's crushed up and put
in a bag for your animal.
The reason calcium sand exists
is because many animals benefit
from calcium supplements in captivity,
which can help increase his
lifespan and quality of life.
And so companies were like,
oh, well, we can make this
substrate out of calcium
and they'll never have too little of it.
But you can have too much calcium as well,
and that is dangerous too.
Also the other ironic
thing about calcium sand
is even though it's made to be ingested,
it still impacts like other substrates.
It still sticks together
and it can still get clogged in their gut.
And it's so condensed and so
strong that it often builds up
faster than the animal can
actually break it down.
So calcium sand,
yes, is also bad, and most
often worse than other sands
because it actually encourages
the reptiles to consume it,
when fine sand might just
accidentally be consumed.
Well, I tong feed my animal,
or I bowl feed my animal
in an area of the enclosure
that does not have sand.
Tong feeding is when you use tongs
or some sort of holding
device, even just your hand,
to hold an insect, for
example, with insectivores,
or to hold a leaf or some type
of vegetable for herbivores.
And this allows them
to eat above the sand.
So say you throw a bunch
of insects in an enclosure
and your animal starts eating them,
they're probably gonna
accidentally grab some substrate
here and there and it starts
to build up inside of them.
But tong feeding takes this risk away.
Well, the thing about this is
eating is not the only time
an animal ingests their substrate.
Pretty much every
reptile uses their tongue
to see what's around them.
You see animals licking
stuff all the time.
Leopard geckos, for example,
they'll just walk around
and they'll be licking everything.
Bearded dragons do the same thing.
Snakes also lick all the time
but the difference is snakes'
tongues are pretty dry
and sand doesn't really
stick to their tongue.
Even if it did, when
it goes in their mouth,
it would probably fall right off.
So snakes are the one example
where it probably will not ingest sand
just living in an enclosure with sand.
But we'll get to snakes in a minute.
Lizards, on the other hand,
are going to be licking,
and even if they just get a
couple grains here and there,
it's likely going to stick and
not always pass through them.
So when they're simply
exploring or scavenging
or just walking around,
they're very likely consuming
small amounts of sand.
So, yeah, tong feeding is great,
and bowl feeding is great.
And it's usually recommended,
it's also great enrichment
for you and the animal.
And it definitely would decrease
the likelihood of impaction
but that risk is still there,
and, for me, the risk is still too big.
And then with snakes, well,
snakes aren't going to be
licking their substrate
and ingesting the sand,
and you can just take them out
of the enclosure to feed them.
This is also true,
and this is actually
the most likely scenario
where sand would be okay,
where you take your snake out to feed it.
And the likelihood of
impaction is extremely low
and probably close to zero.
But, of course, another problem arises,
and that is whether you
should take your snake out
to feed it or not.
I have a very old video
where I am a lot more nervous on camera.
You can check it out if you want.
It's called Should You Feed Your,
Should You Feed Your
Snakes in Their Enclosure.
My short answer is yes,
you should feed them in the enclosure,
and you should not take
them out of the enclosure.
A very short summary of this
is, one, when your snake
is eating and done eating,
it's going to be a lot more worried
because it's gonna have
trouble defending itself
with such a huge meal inside of it.
For this reason,
there's a high likelihood
the snake will regurgitate
or vomit that meal once
you try and put the snake
back in its enclosure.
The second issue is taking
your snake out to feed it
decreases the likelihood
of them actually eating
'cause they're in what might
feel like an unsafe environment
to them and they could
simply refuse the food.
Third, what people do in this case
is they leave the snake out
in a separate tub overnight
so that they can actually
relax, start to digest,
and then put it back in
the morning or the next day
to ensure the snake is calmed down.
The problem with this,
similar with leopard geckos,
is they need to be in their proper setups
to digest their food efficiently
and the most comfortably.
But if you put them in a
tub or something overnight,
they're going to be in
a different environment
that might not be ideal
for them to start digesting their meal.
Theoretically, you could set
up a whole second enclosure
without sand, but you might as well
just have that be the first
enclosure in the first place.
Again, you can check out
that older video I did with more reasons
as to why you should not
take your snake out to feed.
Well, very fine sand is okay to use,
but coarse sand should be avoided.
And this is another argument,
although a lot less common,
but all sand acts the same.
Although coarse sand
is more likely to stick
and clump up, especially
even in amphibians,
for example, axolotls can even be impacted
if the sand is too coarse.
Meanwhile, fine sand works
pretty well with axolotls.
Now, I don't know a ton about axolotls,
and I won't go into the details of that,
but you can find info elsewhere
where it's proven that
axolotls can do fine
on the right types of sand.
But reptiles, it's back to
just simply what we've seen
and what's happened
where any type of sand,
whether it's fine play sand
or more coarse types of sand,
all have that risk of impaction.
Again, the risk is probably a
bit lower with the fine sand,
but it still clumps together
just like any other sand would.
Well, sand mixes are fine,
and you need sand for bioactivity.
We can knock these both
out at the same time.
You do not need sand for bioactivity.
Bioactivity is where an
enclosure is more self-sustaining
and like an ecosystem
where there's little bugs
in your substrate, most commonly
springtails and isopods,
and these eat away at the waste.
You also normally have
plants in a bioactive setup,
and plants need their
own mix of substrate.
I certainly don't know much
about keeping plants alive
but, with that said, certain
plants need certain things
in the substrate to keep them alive.
But there are many plant
options that do not need sand.
And insects that you use for bioactivity
don't really need sand at all.
We sell springtails and isopods
and we use cool mixes as well.
We normally do coconut fiber with charcoal
and sphagnum moss and maybe
even some cypress mulch
or something like that.
And other people use many other products
and most often sand is mixed into it.
But I've had bioactive
enclosures for years now
and they don't have sand in them
because sand really doesn't
do a ton for the bioactivity
and there are many ways
to successfully set up
a bioactive enclosure without it.
And then the second argument
is that sand mixes are okay,
if sand's just mixed
in with something else,
there's a small enough amount
that it won't really affect the animal.
This is true as well.
It highly decreases the likelihood.
But, again, I would just leave it out.
I don't see a point in adding it
when there's really not much benefit.
They do help animals burrow, for example,
savannah monitors are
often kept on a sand mix
where they can more easily
burrow in the substrate,
but I think that you can
make burrowing substrates
without that sand just fine.
So is it the end of the world
if you put sand in a substrate mix?
Probably not, but I
would just leave it out.
And those are the 10 most common arguments
for using sand in reptile enclosures
and my responses to all of them.
If you have other arguments
you've heard or seen
or whatever, leave them in the comments,
and maybe I'll make a pinned comment
where I'll leave my responses.
Again, it's not instantly
the end of the world
if your animal is on sand.
I had for my, my first
leopard gecko on sand
for a period of time, and he was on it
for a short enough amount
that nothing really happened.
Also, sand just looks ugly, in my opinion.
And the colored sands even stain reptiles.
My yellow leopard gecko's
feet turned black.
We had a bearded dragon get shipped to us
and it was almost completely pink
from the pink sand it was on.
So I've finally created a piece of content
as to why sand is not a
great reptile substrate
and why I suggest against it.
Check out my other videos
if you want reptile stuff,
usually, usually reptile stuff.
And feel free to leave a comment,
maybe I'll even read it, maybe,
no promises,
with other videos you'd like to see,
and other simple reptile topics
that I've not covered or
that I've covered in the past
that you want me to talk about again.
If want support my videos,
you can do so through Patreon.
You can buy a hoodie or
a T-shirt or something.
And you can check out Emerald Scales
where we sell animals and insects, so.
I guess insects aren't animals, but,
yeah.
Okay, that's it for this video.
I'm Alex, and thanks for watching.
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