5 replies to this topic

[SarahK]

Random but omg does anyone else want to cry when you work so hard to get the gerbils cage clean & tidy, new accessories added etc. & within 10 mins it’s already destroyed?! lol

My son wanted to build some platforms & add new texture to our/his gerbils cage today so 6 hours later after scrubbing the entire cage down, sawing, sanding, building, designing the cage & putting everything back we had the cage looking awesome, 10 mins later the first mess appear & within an hour it’s like we never even touched it. They’ve buried everything including their wheel & extra large sand dish AGAIN.

Im sure it’s pointless asking because gerbils will be gerbils, but any ideas on how to stop them from burying everything, or at least their sand?

[DraculaTheHamster]

can we see a picture of the enclosure?

[daisy~]

If you have a topper or a very tall tank, you can have the sand and wheel on a shelf or platform that's too high for them to kick bedding onto. Otherwise they will get filled with bedding unfortunately.

 

You can't stop them burying everything in the tank sadly. That's just gerbils being gerbils!

 

This is what I have:

 

 

 

They have the whole tank to go wild in and the shelves, sand and wheel stay fairly clean.

 

In one of my other tanks I made a mini topper out of a hamster cage which kept the wheel from being buried at least:

 

 

By the way, have you considered joining The Gerbil Forum? We'd love to have you!

[SarahK]

Hey, sorry for the late reply; new years & all that lol.

 

Sadly we donthave room for a topper not unless I want it right in front of a window which I don't feel happy about. Their tank is 120x70x40cm / 47x27x15 inches (Length/Height/Depth) so a fairly big size for just the two. My son (who they belong to) decided he wanted to change their cage so he spent all the other day cleaning it out completely (half the bedding went back in / half clean), building a structure etc & naturally they destroyed it in minutes lol. So he's gone back to how it was - a crazy mess of bedding, hay, tissue & cardboard tubes & boxes at the bottom, & just added the structure he built & some new boxes for their sand & wheel to go on top of. No doubt they'll chew the boxes but at least they're easy to replace. We're just wanting for their new climbing equipment/toys to arrive as they ate the last two lol   

 

The first photo is what he originally changed the tank to & the second is what it now is & you can see Nuke & Bullet playing.

 

https://ibb.co/3yf4CZc

https://ibb.co/LvRhXNd

 

Oh & I am on the gerbil forum, I think, I just always forget to post there as all my queries tend to be hamster related

Edited by SarahK, 03 January 2022 - 05:45 AM.

[daisy~]

It's been all change at The Gerbil Forum recently. We've got new mods and we're updating the FAQs and pinned posts with up-to-date care information. Definitely worth popping back over some time!

 

Your tank looks really nice. It's a great size and I love what you've done with the long platform at the back. The problem with divided setups where you have one half deep bedding and the other half shallow is firstly that gerbils will always kick all the bedding over the divider, and secondly that gerbils love to dig long burrows, and a divided tank tends to limit that. Your tank is a good height though, so I would say that you could have the sand on a tall platform and it would limit how much bedding is kicked in. So more like your second photo, but deeper bedding and taller platforms. I've never used the flying saucers with gerbils but with an upright wheel (it needs to be 11" or ideally even bigger for gerbils) you can try suspending it upside down from the tank lid as this can make it less likely to be buried.

[peablossom]

Random but omg does anyone else want to cry when you work so hard to get the gerbils cage clean & tidy, new accessories added etc. & within 10 mins it’s already destroyed?! lol

My son wanted to build some platforms & add new texture to our/his gerbils cage today so 6 hours later after scrubbing the entire cage down, sawing, sanding, building, designing the cage & putting everything back we had the cage looking awesome, 10 mins later the first mess appear & within an hour it’s like we never even touched it. They’ve buried everything including their wheel & extra large sand dish AGAIN.

Im sure it’s pointless asking because gerbils will be gerbils, but any ideas on how to stop them from burying everything, or at least their sand?

you could add in a divider to put their wheel and sand in? gerbils are such destroyers lol