Hello everyone! Besides being an enthusiast of the subconscious and metaphysical. I’m also a huge “lover” of animals.
I live in the desert and there’s insects, reptiles, and amphibians galore. I love reptiles, and I personally own an (almost) two year old Sulcata Tortoise named Apple, and (well he’s technically my boyfriends) a Savanna Monitor named Smaug.
I used to have a Leopard Gecko, Mitch, (my first reptile ever) but sadly, it was a also me to blame, he passed away from being compacted from eating too much of the sand substrate when catching crickets. This was when I was a freshman in high school, and I’ll admit I was very irresponsible and careless. I didn’t even notice he was compacted before it was to late 
A few other people have had this experience as well, and I don’t think they knew it was due to the sand. When catching crickets, reptiles usually dart out to grab it, grabbing up anything around it as well (the sand) and since their mouth would be wet, it would pick up a lot of sand. Most of us have been to the beach, wet feet + waling on sand = sand covered feet.
I thought I’d spread the word. We use gardening soil mixed with play sand (which we get from The Home Depot) more soil, a bit of sand, so (for our burrowing friends) they can dig a bit. Tortoises don’t eat crickets, but if there was sand in there the greens I feed her are very wet so she would definitely eat the sand.
If you have sand substrate right now, I suggest you change it as soon as you can!
Sadly, I’ve gone through five phones and don’t have any photos, but I’d like to honor Mitch in this post as well.. He was a beautiful yellow/orange guy, and was super sweet. He loved to be held, and never tried to bust off unless he caught something on the wind he wanted to explore. I love him very much, and I hope wherever he is he’s loving it.
Thank you for reading, if you know someone this relates to, please tell them!
subtle Earth 