Post by Nocnurse on Sept 18, 2022 11:48:10 GMT -8
Ok, going to try to make this as short and sweet as possible. My 14 yr old son wanted a small animal. After some research, we decided gerbils would be best. I feel like we did a lot of reading before purchasing. One thing I didn’t think the research, was which sex tends to do better together. We got 2 females together, from a pet store. Have a 10-gallon tank with the tank topper on top with necessary contents. They got along great and snuggled in together at night to sleep. Both ran around, up and down and seemed very happy with their habitat.
Day 8, woke up to both of them with scratches on their face and neck area. We continued to monitor them. A little bit of chasing, but not too bad, but still not trusting them. Called the pet store for advice. Double checked to make sure both are female and appear to be. Was told we needed at least a 20-gallon tank, even with the tank topper. To deep clean the tank and contents and “start from scratch”. So we did. Put them back in the cage and it got worse very quickly. The one with hush worse scratches was now chasing the other non-stop, jumping her and ended in a scuffle.
Separated them again. One is in the original enclosure and the other is in a much smaller plastic bin with holes drilled in the lid (until we can figure out a plan). We’ve swapped them to allow both more room and exercise. We’re now heading for a 20-gallon tank to do a split tank. Everything I’ve read said it can take 3+ weeks for females to be ready to co-mingle, which is fine. We know to switch them out several times a day, sleeping in the opposite side each night. My question, does anyone have experience with successfully reuniting a pair of females who had been fine, but then began fighting? We’re really wanting this to work.
Thank-you in advance.