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Question:

substrate ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

can i use vermiculite as a substrate for my leopard gecko? if not, what else could i use instead?

Answer:

KAOLINITE - small pseudo-hexagonal plates. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral sheet of alumina octahedra. SMECTITE - derived from pyrophyllite or talc but with a slight negative charge as a result of ionic substitutions in the octahedral tetrahedral sheets FINE GRAINED MICAS - crystallise in the monoclinic system but the forms approximate those of the hexagonal system. Micas have sheet structures whose basic units consist of two polymerised sheets of silica (SiO4) tetrahedrons. Two such sheets are juxtaposed with the vertices of their tetrahedrons pointing toward each other; the sheets are cross-linked with cations—for example, aluminium in muscovite—and hydroxyl pairs complete the coordination of these cations VERMICULITE - monoclinic but usually pseudomorphous. Vermiculite is a 2:1 clay, meaning it has 2 tetrahedral sheets for every one octahedral sheet. Vermiculite has a high cation exchange capacity at 100-150 meq/100 g. Vermiculite clays are weathered micas in which the potassium ions, after biotite or phlogopite, between the molecular sheets are replaced by magnesium and iron ions. CHLORITE - monoclinic; forms are at times pseudo-hexagonal. Chlorites have a 2:1 sandwich structure (2:1 sandwich layer = tetrahedral-octahedral-tetrahedral = t-o-t...), this is often referred to as a talc layer. Unlike other 2:1 clay minerals, chlorite's interlayer space (the space between each 2:1 sandwich filled by a cation) is composed of (Mg2+, Fe3+)(OH)6. Essentially, the crystal structure of each of these minerals are very similar.
Structure Of Kaolinite

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