# What (and even IF) to get.



## Alca (Apr 6, 2010)

First of all, hello to you all. My (real) name is Tom, i'm 19 years old, I'm new to this forum and have come here looking for an answer.

I need to explain quite a bit to form my question, please forgive my wall of text.

A few years back I decided I'd like to have some animals for myself. We as a family have 2 dogs, my sister has small fish, and we have 2 rabbits outside. After much consideration I got 2 turtles. I kep them for a few years, but me and my mother began to feel sorry for those little guys being stuck in a terrarium. We found a guy who keeps many (as in hundreds) of animals and has a small pond with turtles in it and brought my turtles there. They were the biggest of the entire pond and I was delighted to hear that they survived the winter. Those two little guys will be in my heart forever.

(now on to the point)
Now, a year later, I'm left with the terrarium and an urge to get some new animals. I've been thinking about gerbils or mice (which a glass terrarium is good for). I'm open to other suggestions3
The terrarium is a "glas box" which is open on the top. It's 100cm wide, 50cm deep en 40cm high.
Now here's the tricky part: the only place i can put my terrarium is in my basement. Don't worry, it's well cleaned, has furniture, even a tv,.. It's more of a hobby room than a basement. It has some heating, but it'll never get as warm as in a living room. It's a tiny bit humid, but that's barely noticable. Then there's also the obvious problem that a basement is dark when the lights are off. The lighting is good when the lamps are on, but it might be a bit silly to leave the big lamps on when I might use some diffuse lightning or so.

So, finally, the question: can it be possible to keep some small animals there (preferably gerbils or mice os something similar) in the terrarium, and how should I go about doing that?

Thank you for any help, and once again sorry for the wall of text, I find it hard to express myself in few words 


Alca aka Tom


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## maria84 (Apr 7, 2010)

Hello - I'm new here too :thumbup:

You need to stand back and think about the quality of life for the little ones if you decide to get any.

Here are the issues that I'd be worried about for you to consider:

1. Day and night
I think it's really important that there is daylight and a night time for small animals. If it's always dark, or sometimes there's light and then it just goes straight off to darkness and it's not a regular pattern, then the animals are going to be really confused and it's going to mess with their internal body clock. They'll most probably have a lot of trouble with sleeping and be grumpy.

2. Humid
The main problem with this would be the smell. Having small animals in a (even slightly) humid space, there is a very strong, foul smell - EVEN if you fully clean it out every day (which I don't think is possible or practical, really). Can you cope with that? It will also waft into the house. I had a bit of a probably with smell even in a very airy place.

3. Cold
There are a lot of lovely warmy things that small animals can snuggle into but if you choose this, you would need to spend money replacing them regularly because they will bite into it and leave it quite a mess and unfit for purpose, really.

If there is anything else you're wondering, feel free to post and I'll try and come back to have a look.


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