Ask The Gerbils

Hi Hallie,

I recently got a female gerbil to go with the other that I already had. The new one is 4 or 5 months old and the older one is a year old. We used the split cage method and then had them together everyday for about 30 minutes. When they finally started to be extremely nice to each other we put them in a new cage together. (The crittertrail pink/crittertrail dazzle combinded with tubes) After a month of putting them together the new gerbil had a black outline on one side of its nose that wasn't there before. Do you know what this could be from?

P.S. I use carefresh bedding and my gerbils don't seem to fight.

Sincerely,
M.

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Hi M.!

I’m so excited. You’re the first person who wrote to me! Thank you so much for your letter! :)

You mentioned that your gerbils live in a Crittertrail home. Those have cage bars on them, right? I bet what’s happening is that your gerbil is chewing on the bars of the cage, and they’re either staining her fur or rubbing a little bit of the fur off her nose so that darker skin underneath is showing through? Is she chewing on the bars a lot?

If you think it is chewing on the bars that is causing the marks on the side of her nose, you might want to move your gerbils to a glass fish tank, like my sister Liza and I live in. (You can see a photo of us in our home to the left.)

We have lots of toys in our tank: an exercise wheel, a large wooden toy to play in and chew on (we buried it under the bedding before Kylee took our picture!), a small coconut hut, and a glass jar to dig in. We also get lots of cardboard to chew. We just finished destroying a cardboard box right before our photo was taken! :)

If your gerbils live in a glass tank, make sure they have a screen lid (which you can get in the reptile aisle at the pet store) and a set of lid clamps to hold the lid in place (also found in the reptile aisle of the pet store).

There are some other reasons why we like glass tanks best. You can read about them in the Ideal Gerbil Homes tip.

If you want to move your gerbils to a glass tank but still want your gerbils to have time to play in their Crittertrail cage, they could spend time there while you clean their tank. (Or they could spend some play time inside the Crittertrail each day as out-of-tank time.)

I hope that helps and that your gerbil’s nose gets better soon. Please tell your gerbils hello from both me and my grandpa Herman!

From your friend,
Hallie