Cleaning their cage....???

[SnuggleHam]

I love that my tank is up on a stand becasue it allows me to look from the button and see their furry bums and cute pink feet when they are digging around in their igloo nest.



I have noticed that robo's make very small poops :oops: Of course I suppose its to be expected being the smallest hamster species you can get. But since I have them housed in a tank that is 29 gallons is it necessary to clean their cage out once a week?



I’m using carefresh and since its very absorbent I doubt those little girls aren’t going to make much of a mess. Here is what I was thinking. Maybe I would just clean the entire cage out every other week but clean out their next area at lest once a week adding fresh bedding since that’s where most of the poop accumulates.



What do you guys think about that?

[babyboos]

Hi Candace

Sounds like you have a cool setup - being able to see underneath the enclosure.

I use a very deep layer of litter for my little ones as they love to dig and tunnel, and as you have discovered they have tiny poops, so hardly noticable amongst all that lot :!:

Hopefully they will use their potty for wees but even then as you say Carefresh is very absorbent so you can potentially go two to three weeks before doing a complete clean out, in fact I know some Roborovski Dwarf breeders who use a mix of peat and sand in their enclosures a bit like a gerbilarium and they only need clean this out every quarter. I try a similiar thing with a mix of wood shavings, carefresh, wooden pelleted cat litter, shredded blank newspaper parchment (I live near a printers!) and brown paper, empty cardboard egg boxes and plenty of toilet and kitchen roll tubes. I can spot clean every day and as my litle ones use their potties well if I wanted to I could go a good month or more easily without completely cleaning the enclosure out, and to be honest I do get the distinct impression they do not like being distured too often. I empty the coconut out at least once per week and put fresh thinly shreddly tissues in and they then spend a good day pouching them so they go nice and crinkly.

[SnuggleHam]

Thanks for the reply,



I think I may just clean their cage every other week and just refresher the bedding in their sleeping area once a week where most of their poops accumulate and old seed husks and crumbs gather.

[babyboos]

Good idea - you can see how it goes with a pure Carefresh litter layer. This stuff is too expensive for me to use exclusively unfortunately. I am trying a new horse paper based litter currently which comes in bales rather than small bags like the Carefresh. Will let you know how soon what I think.