New gerbil pair not sleeping together.

[sar]

Hi all,
So I’m completely new to all of this. We got our gerbils only 36 hours ago but I’m already worried as the pair seem very different and quite separate. Not sure if I’m just over thinking though.
They are boys and I think they are very young but the pet shop didn’t actually tell me how old. We have a decent size tank 75x40x50cm with deep bedding in the bottom and cage layer in the top half.
Anyway one of them spent the first day digging a full set of tunnels, has explored the top section, played in the sand bath and seems quite curious. The other one has mostly stayed inside a plastic tunnel. He comes out only briefly, I have seen him eat from the food bowl but not drink anything (although he could have done that during the night). Whilst I was happy that it’s very early and probably completely normal I noticed today that the nervous one sleeps in the plastic tunnel alone. The more confident one has been sleeping in his constricted tunnel, or today slept in the sand bath. Is this normal or should they be sleeping together? They haven’t been fighting or anything but have been active at different times and don’t seem to have interacted with each other much. Should I remove the plastic tunnel to encourage them to be together? Or would this be too stressful for the nervous one.
The nervous one also darts back into his plastic tunnel at any noise or movement, even sometimes when it’s just his mate.
Sorry for the massive long post. Thank you for reading.

[LilyandDaisy]

Hello,

Personally what I would do here is remove the top cage if you can, and remove everything from the tank aside from one large house, a water bottle (or two), scattered food and cardboard/hay for shredding. I'd also lower the bedding to around 5 inches. That sounds drastic but I find this "back to basics" approach often helps with preventing minor potential issues from becoming major issues. Not that this is necessarily a major issue. It could just be them settling in, but I think a more basic tank setup is often beneficial in the early days anyway, especially if the gerbils have been taken from a larger group and need to figure out a new pecking order. Too many distractions and "things" to be possessive over aren't necessarily helpful in that situation.

Once they've been sleeping together for a few days you can start gradually building the enclosure up again.

Hopefully they'll settle down soon and please let us know how they get on

[sar]

Thank you for you quick reply. The cage part is attached unfortunately but they do have a lot more stuff than in the enclosure they were in before so I will remove a lot of it and see how they go.
Thank you

[sar]

Took lots of the bedding and toys out, including Bertie’s hiding tunnel. He seemed a bit unhappy about it at first, was digging up the area it was in etc. They were both quite active last night digging and sorting but seemed quite positive. This morning when I got up they were asleep together 😊
Because I disturbed them they both came out and said hello, not something Bertie was doing before! And then went back in together.
Thanks so much for the advice!

[betty]

Great news - hopefully it stays that way.

Stick with the reduced set up for a while, and then gradually add things in one at a time - and try to keep most of their substrate at eash change time just to keep things settled.

And let's hope Bertie sticks with his new found friendliness!