[shane]

My Syrian Tobias has a nice wooden sand bath and a little plastic toilet with a roof. He loves his sand bath and digging is his favourite form of exercise, maybe a close second to running on his wheel. He only seems to visit the toilet for a bit of digging. Instead, he pees in his sand bath, which could be convenient except it’s a nice untreated wooden thing that I paid way to much for (lesson learnt) and after only a few weeks it’s starting to get a bit minging so I need to replace it. I’m after a bit of advise on what to do next.

I tried moving some of the used sand from the bath to the toilet with no luck. I’ve considered removing the bath temporarily to try and force him to use the toilet but he loves the sand bath so much. I’ve also heard that those little toilets with a roof are too small.

He’s in a Duna Maxi and the bath and toilet are in one end. I’m thinking of replacing them both and getting a big glass or ceramic dish - about 18x40cm - that will fill the whole end of the cage and fill that with sand.

How do I then go about cleaning? Right now when I clean his sand bath I sieve the sand - which doesn’t pong (perhaps because the wood is soaking it up) - to remove the occasional bits and then I clean the wood. Maybe, if the new dish is big enough I could fit one of those corner toilets in the dish so I don’t have to remove the whole lot every time?

I guess I could just dump the sand on the floor of the cage but then, if he doesn’t pee on something like a corner toilet it’ll make cleaning even harder. Hmm, the conundrums of a new owner...