What is your monthly upkeep costs for gerbils?

[phantomslayer]

Its been a while... Honestly at this point I'm nearly given up hope on getting gerbils for now. My sister quit so my babysitting income was greatly reduced. Nearly nothing. She got a new job recently but its during school hours so I would legit only have $3 an hour coming in for my one niece seeing as she would be home by the time the older kids get home. But my heart still wants gerbils. So as a possible final push I figured I'd ask the make or break question. How much is your monthly upkeep costs. Mainly I'm talking about bedding, sand and food costs. From what I figured through lots of research $260 every month-month and a half depending how much I would have to clean the tank. But research is just not exact. Things differ. So I wanted to ask first hand. How much is the upkeep costs? 

[LilyandDaisy]

I think your estimate might be a little on the high side. I probably spend around that per year on my gerbils (excluding vet bills). Although after years of keeping rodents I do have a lot of stuff - toys, hides and so on - already which means I don't have to buy as much as when I first started.

Food: I currently mix my own food. I would estimate it costs me around £5-£10 per month but there are definitely cheaper food options out there. You can buy a bag of gerbil food from a pet shop for $3-$6 which should keep a pair fed for at least a month. Treats are mainly sunflower seeds and mealworms which are cheap to buy.

Bedding: Because I have a very large tank and a topper (where my gerbils mainly pee) my bedding stays very clean and I don't throw much away. Twice a year I empty the tank, clean out all the dust etc that has accumulated at the bottom, throw away around a third of the bedding and put the rest back in, and top it up with new bedding. It probably costs about £30 to fill the tank in the first place, and then about another £20 per year to keep it topped up.

Your bedding costs will vary greatly depending on the size and style of your enclosure. Smaller tanks need cleaning out more often. You shouldn't need to be cleaning them out more than once a month (if you do, the tank is probably too small or the bedding is too shallow), and often much less. Pet shops will tell you to clean them out weekly but that's unnecessary. You could have a look at bedding options where you are see what it might cost you. When I had a 30 gallon tank I found it needed 4kg of bedding plus some hay to fill it, if that helps at all.

Sand: This costs me probably £1-£2 per month. My gerbils mostly pee on the wooden topper shelves (they're painted so I just wipe them clean as needed) which means the sand doesn't get very dirty so I don't need to change as often I might otherwise. I buy sepiolite chinchilla sand which is a slightly more expensive option. You can also use play sand, which is very cheap.

Toys etc: The biggest cost for me is probably cork logs because gerbils get through those fairly fast. I have just bought 3 new huge ones at £10 each! Apart from the cork logs, I try to buy quite robust wooden accessories which will last many years. I have some hollowed out birch logs for tunnels, birch log houses and grapevines which all last a very long time. Plus lots of household cardboard which is free, and hay which is very cheap.

To furnish a brand new tank you might spend $40-$80 (depending on size), but to be honest gerbils don't need a lot of stuff in their tanks. At minimum (in addition to the deep bedding), you need a water bottle, and a container for the sand. It's recommended to have some branches and tunnels to help with burrow structure, a wheel, a platform to put the sand bath and wheel on, and spare water bottles. You might also want to get a nesting box or house, a couple of hides, perhaps a food bowl for the fresh food (you can scatter the dry food).

Vet bills: This is the most difficult one to predict because it depends on the gerbils and also on your local area. It's a good idea to preregister with a local vet (rather than waiting until an issue arises) and also find out their basic costs such as consultation fees and any additional costs for out-of-hours or weekend care. At minimum, to prevent suffering, you should always be able to pay for a gerbil to be euthanised if necessary.

If you put aside $10 per gerbil per month, assuming you have a pair and you got them at a couple of months old, by the time they turn 2 years old you would have over $400 accrued which should will cover most issues that might arise. Of course there are surgeries and investigations which could cost into the several hundreds if you wanted to and were able to pay for that but everyone has their financial limits, and the only thing that's really essential is that a gerbil is never left to suffer unnecessarily.

[phantomslayer]

I've only ever had dogs, cats, fish and guinea pigs. What seems to be my biggest issue is the bedding. That was estimated to be the most expensive to do hay, paper and aspen bedding mixture. The food and the sand would be easiest to cover and probably the most stable. Its just the bedding might be my issue since I don't know how often id need to buy more. My plan was to use a 30 long aquarium. Eventually building up the height to increase it.

[sparkbubble]

I have bought aspen and then hand-cut long strips of paper to make a sort of 'hay' (DON'T use a shredding machine, as the dust will pile up along with the shredded paper). To my understanding, gerbils do not need hay beyond nesting material and maybe something to nibble on, as their diet is already well-rounded with simply commercial mix and an occasional vegetable or protein as a treat (Hay serves neither purpose). I spend very little in exchange for more work. I start with a bag of bedding (Usually All living things aspen, but I'm trying out paper) and food (vita prima) every 2-21/2 months or so (about $160-180, and I have a 29 gallon aquarium), so yes, the bedding is the most expensive thing you need to buy. I mentioned that I hand cut paper shreds to mix it in with the bedding to make it deeper for the gerbs to burrow in. Toys are probably an extra $20 (a wheel is about $30), but I buy non-toxic glue and take boxes home from work to build them toys in my free time. Finally, I buy a 50 lb bag of play sand from a hardware store (Lowes) and bake it half to death, so that's only extra 5$ as well per year. Gerbils are actually great pets because you can give them a happy, stimulated life without breaking the bank. I have never taken my gerbs to the vet (I suppose I should secure one), but I do have $200 set aside just in case.