eggnoi wrote:@sabatea
thank you!
I was actually thinking of putting fleece on the bottom, since I've heard it's okay for all small rodents. Is it true for rats?
While it won't harm them, fleece is absolutely disgusting and stinks after a day or two. The main reason why I hate it is that it offers no digging, foraging and nesting opportunities like loose substrate does. I'm a strong advocate of scatter feeding (it's one of the best enrichment tools out there!) which can't be done correctly on fleece/liners. Rats love digging through the substrate to search for food and will pick out suitable pieces to make nests with. I clean out the main cage every two weeks, sometimes more, and they don't stink at all. The only smelly cage atm is the pregnant doe cage, but that's purely due to the fact that there is much more protein and greens in their diet right now.
Edit: the kinds of loose substrate I would recommend are marketed at horses. So either wood shavings (must be klin dried and dust extracted) or cardboard shavings/squares. They come in big bales of about 20kg and are very inexpensive. Lasts forever too. Things such as care fresh or paper pellets that you can buy at pet stores are way overpriced and not very good either.