It seems to me, that there is a much needed discussion on substrate. I've found differentiating opinions everywhere during my numerous episodes of conversation about dragons, as well ads reading on them. It seems some some of the more popular substrates include astroturf, organic soil, bark/woodchips/mulch and a few others.

If you would, explain which substrate you are using with your dragon, why you feel it is best, and where you bought it.

I'll start:

I'm using bark. I am using it because the terrarium turf I tried would not hold moisture so I resorted back to it. It's the best thing I've personally used, but I'm looking to try organic soil, but didn't see any to buy yet. I've heard of problems with ingestion of the bark, but I use chips larger than I think he would ingest currently, and plan to switch to organic soil. I bought my bark at PETCO and terrarium turf at a local pet shop.

How about you?

Alex

Currently using organic soil. I like it because I can attempt (I stress attempt, little bugger likes digging and clawing at everything) to grow plants in it. I also use it as a filteration system in my viv. The only downsides are the dragon carries dirt all over the viv and it's start to clog the filters in my aquarium. Other than that, I like it.

I'm not too pleased with bark, myself. It's a rough substrate that I can't imagine is comfortable to walk or lay on, it can be swallowed, even big pieces, and sometimes molds easily in a high humidity. Those are just some personal observations on it, and having seen other people work with it, I'm glad I avoided it.

I've seen a mixture of soil and wood chips used successfully, as long as it was kept up with. But it's not as easy to keep humidity levels up, so you really have to work at that.

Personally, I always recommend the simple substrates - repti-carpet, newspaper, tile or slate. Since water dragons are climbers and swimmers, I've personally found these to work the best for my situation. They're easy to clean, and don't take away from humidity levels.

A lot of it depends on how much work you're willing put into it, though.

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Punctuation. It saves lives.

I use and advise soil. It is as natural as it gets, it helps with humidity, it provides gravid females with good digging material, insects such as earthworms can be introduced into it to "tend" to it, it will not cause an impaction as long as the animal is healthy and a proper environment (such as proper temperatures) is provided, etc..

The biggest negative is, as The JD said, that soil can be messy when it comes to pools. It clogs filters. I find that filters are more trouble than they are worth (unless you have a powerful filter) as they can be a pain (being an additional object to clean and unclog) and dragon poop does not get cleaned up anyway and can clog the filter as well. Might as well just clean the pool area more often. A shop vacuum or drainage system helps with the cleaning of large pools.

Soil can be bought at a garden store or dug up in a pesticide-free area (all free of manure, chemicals, etc. of course). It can be baked in an oven at 350°F for 15-30 minutes to kill any "bad" insects and insect eggs (such as gnats) or "bad" bacteria you do not want in your dragon's and your home.

I agree with Typhanie with her opinion on bark. My greatest concern with bark is that is can cause an impaction if swallowed.

I personally despise paper towels, tile, slate, newspaper, repti-carpet and the like. In my opinion, such substrates are only useful for sick or very young animals. I prefer natural substrates. Reptiles (and all animals) have adapted through generation after generation to survive in their environments and thus are well suited for these environments - or else they would not be around today, so I believe that their natural environment should be mimicked as closely as possible. But that is just my opinion.

I have the Eco Earth. Very messy for the water area though. Cassie loves to get in the water and then come out and "roll" in the dirt. Water changes are like, 3 times a day. In the "big cage", I am going to try Tricias suggestion of using linoluem. This cage is for Drago, the female, so I am giving her a gravid "box" to use for her digging. (Large litter pan)

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***Tami***

As an addition to my comment, if you're going to use soil I have some recommendations in theory only, as these are things I've come up with, but haven't -yet- implemented so I can't gaurentee them to work. This is also assuming you have a relatively large aquarium in your enclosure.

The first idea is if you're going to have soil, build a special filter made specifically for catching dirt, so it won't get caught in your other filter(s) and effect bio filtration. My idea is to get a rather large pump that will simply pump water up into a cannister held above the water, and inside the cannister is a series of phsyical filters that drain down into a tube that goes back into the aquarium. The idea is that the filters inside it should be easy enough to be removed, rinsed, and replaced easily so it can be done daily. The pump needs to be powerful enough to circulate the water in the tank so dirt doesn't settle in the tank, but get caught by the pump and eventually deposited in your filter. You can make the cannister out of PVC or the like.

My second idea, which is the one I'm going to attempt. Is that my dirt box actually has a layer of clay balls on the bottom (Terra-lite/Hydroton) and the box itself is waterproof. At any time, there is about an inch of water settling at the bottom of my dirt box, but I have a sump pump that pumps the water back into the aquarium when the water gets too high. Now my idea is to get a strong pump that can move the water around so dirt doesn't settle and another (Possiblely the same pump) will be on a timer and will pump the water to a "rain" system over my dirt box. The idea is that any dirt that got carried to the aquarium will hopefully be sent back to the dirt box via a sprinkler. The dirt box is now acting as a filter and should help with humidity. I know this is more of a filtering explanation, but I figure it solves any cons with soil as a substrate. I'll be sure to report on how well this all works once I actually get it set up this summer.

Interesting idea!
However since you are pumping water that is carrying sediment thru your rain sprinkler, how will you prevent it frrom clogging up the sprinkler itself and if it does how will you clean it out? Since to effectively create rain the water will have to be goiing in under pressure, you would have to have all the fittings and piping sealed.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

My idea is to try using more of a sprinkler head much like used in fire-sprinkler systems in buildings. Water is poured straight down onto a (horrible description...) cut-up cone so that the water is splashed in different directions. Does that make sense? Possibly looking into something that will spin via water pressure. Like one of these

Even so I would still think that you would have to have a restricted area in the water flow in order for it to function and not pour a stream of water out of it and the sediment would eventually build up and block it.
Mind you I have no knowledge of this stuff just brainstorming!

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

You're right. And I also have no knowledge either, I plan on finding out from experience once I start toying around with it. But as long as it has good water pressure, AKA the pump feeds a 1/2" tube but the end tappers off to a 1/8" hole, it should have enough pressure to shoot the water and reflect it a good amount while at the same time, 1/8 hole is more than big enough to shoot out dirt. I will have to worry about skin sheds blocking stuff.