Toilets not working

[Ruth Edwards]

My hams have been using their toilets happily up till now but both seem to be "out of order".
They both seem to like peeing in an enclosed toilet rather than an open dish and they've been using Potty Litter for a while happily.
But the potty litter doesn't seem to absorb the smell of Daisy's wee any more. Her toilet was horrible on Wednesday so I cleaned it out and put in fresh potty litter and then she immediately weed in it once and the smell was terrible even though the little balls soaked up all the liquid. I've tried guinea pig litter too, same thing.
Little Cotton seems to have gone off using his and now wees on the corner of his wheel stand and he's put fitch in his toilet. Also his toilet seems just a bit small.
Do any of you think there's a better substrate for toilets I could try, and do you think a slightly bigger enclosed toilet would help?

[AmityvilleHams]

Potty litter(the storebought clay type)generally isn't safe,so if you're using that you need to change litter regardless.Paper based(or hamster safe natural wood)cat litter pellets could work,or high quality Chinchilla bathing sand(or sterilized children's play sand).You could try just using Fitch instead of trying to have a separate litter if it would work better for Cotton

A large baking dish of some sort(ceramic or glass)would be a good idea for a litter tray,especially the loaf pan types.If you had a very large container that could also fit a terracotta pot,you could add that for a bit of hiding space.I'd avoid anything plastic though,as plastic tends to absorb odors and can be very hard to clean while ceramic and glass are extremely easy to clean.

[Ruth Edwards]

Thanks Amity, I've been thinking of getting a couple of ceramic things like those salt containers, and you often see them in the local thrift shops. I love this kind of shopping. Perhaps I'll try the guinea pig litter again.

[cypher]

I've always found chinchilla sand to be the best thing for litter trays, the only other thing I would use is plain fitch.
I doubt the safety of potty litter too.

Salt pigs could work well.

[flowerfairy]

I use sand in all my hamsters toilets. I use the teeny enclosed one for my robos and rabbit corner litter trays for the syrians. In fact Kashi and Robin both have sand in about a third of their cages.

Popcorn (russian dwarf) has a mini corner litter tray but going to find him something bigger.

I also love cheapo shops for this kind of thing.

Hamster wee is v smelly!!! I get my chinchilla sand from zooplus but hope to move onto childrens play sand from argos. God it is soooo cheap from argos.

[Ruth Edwards]

The play sand sounds good, Daisy likes having a little wash/shower in her chinchilla sand at the moment but we'll see what happens
Thanks so much for your recommendations!

[Pebbles82]

I use Chinchilla sand in a corner shaped potty. Newt puts Fitch on top of it if it gets smelly Our last hammy did the same. They're quite tidy little things really (apart from kicking sand everywhere sometimes). I think the problem with using something like a cookie jar as a toilet is you would use a lot of sand, cleaning it out every 5 days or so, if it's pee'd in. Newt had a cookie jar type sand bath at first - he just used it for digging and pooping and not for peeing, and still pee'd in the corner he wanted to pee in.

I think the trick with potties is to put them in the right place - eg where the hammy chooses to pee. I've also found if you give them a big house, they move their pee corner inside the house and you can put the potty inside there. Both our hammies have done that. Newt has a rabbit house