Question - Monitor Substrate

[Bartman]

I was looking at some pics at Proexotics.com. I first want to say they look like they have an Amazing facility over there. Very clean looking.

Anyways, what I wanted to know as I was looking at certain monitor pictures (or burrowing animals) what kind of dirt they were using and where one could get it. I’ve tried outside dirt, 2 different kinds you could say, and they both did very poorly imo. I’ve switched back to aspen recently (a 6 inch layer) and he seems to like that better (he is burrowing or digging more now)

Here are some pics. The dirts like red but it looks like it keeps up very good.









When I tried putting dirt in my enclosure it looked nothing like this. It was more clumped up in balls and just didn’t look like what they are using at ALL. Any help is appreciated.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Silty alkaline dirt. It can be found in every province, except maybe PEI.

[Bartman]

Can it be bought from a place like canadian tire, or a more specific garden only store?

[jungleshadows]

What they use is called decomposed granite.

I have used dirt from my back yard and had it worked, I also use riverbed dirt. I also use cypress mulch, weeds, leaves, sphagnum moss. It all depends on what monitor.

I have used store bought top soil and mixed it with tropical play sand, but it doesn't work as good.

[Bartman]

Its for a savannah, my bad.

So do you think I could find the decomposed granite at some garden place?

[jungleshadows]

Call your local landscaper or nursery and ask for any types of sandy soils, sandy loam, riverbed soils. Or go over and check out what they got and see if anything appears to look good. Then try it out, if it doesn't seem to work toss it out and try again.

If your after that decomposed granite ask for it also. I have never used it myself so I couldn't recomend it or not recomend it. But one thing to stay away from is clay based soils. Clay does not breath well and the monitors do not like it.