Komodo Tortoise Eco Terrain

Tortoises dig. It is not decoration or boredom, it is what they do with a substantial part of the day in the wild, and a tortoise standing on a flat liner has been quietly deprived of the main thing on its to-do list.

This is a soil and sand mix put together to imitate the ground that Mediterranean, Russian and other arid-country tortoises evolved on. Komodo describe it as a 100% naturalistic substrate, and the point of laying it deep rather than thin is that a deep layer is what allows normal burrowing behaviour rather than just scratching at a surface. It comes as 10 litres, and Komodo also say it suits certain lizards.

• 10 litre bag
• Soil and sand mix
• Described by Komodo as a 100% naturalistic substrate
• Made for Mediterranean, Russian and other arid-environment tortoises
• A deep layer allows normal burrowing
• Komodo state it also suits certain lizards

Komodo will not tell you how deep, or which lizards. They recommend a deep layer without saying what deep means for a given species, and they say certain lizards without naming one — so if you keep something other than an arid tortoise, that is a question for your exotics vet or the species' own care sheet rather than something this label answers. Bear in mind too that 10 litres is a volume, not an area: how far a bag goes depends entirely on the footprint of your table and the depth you are aiming for, and a burrowing depth over a large table will take more bags than people expect.

Who it's for: keepers of Hermann's, Horsfield's, spur-thighed and other dry-climate tortoises setting up or topping up a table, and anyone whose tortoise currently has nothing to dig into.