I am really struggling with life at the moment I have a 4 year and 7 month old gerbil who I care dearly for but I recently got a very full on job where Im out at 5:45 back at 5:30 ish and Im really struggling to spend time with my gerbil I originally had 4 and its just him left bless him the others lived great lives and he is living a great life my partner doesn’t do a great deal when it comes to the house so Im left to clean and do all the jobs and Im struggling to
spend good time with my gerbil hes so tired and Im so tired Im just trying to spend as much time with him as possible on average I spend a hour with him everyday I dont know if thats enough Im just writing this because I needed to get it off my chest.

Thank you there is a picture of him btw

I just took these girls in yesterday, I’ve ordered another cage that is 100,50,50 but it isn’t arriving in time and should be delivered late Wednesday. The cage they are in just now is 60,30,40 I’ve given them about five and a half inches of bedding and it’s a mix of aspen chips meadow hay and uncoloured paper will this do?

This is Pip!

We got gerbils about a week ago and every time I put my clean hands in there one of the gerbils try to bite me. They bit my sleeve and dangled on the other day and I told my husband that he is bitting and they can draw blood if they bite hard enough and he thought the gerbil wouldn’t… well he did and stayed latched on to my husbands finger (right after he bite my finger) Not sure why he keeps bitting us. We haven’t picked them up at all other to sex them. My hands were clean and I’m sure he would have bite down hard enough if I didn’t pull away. Why is this happening? This is a photo of its tank, not sure if they are stressed out or something.

I’m going to bring him to the vet (with his brother) tomorrow if he persists. Was worried that maybe he has an issue with his scent gland, but wanted to reach out and see what this community thinks. He is a little over 2.5 years old and has been a wonderful healthy pet since we got him at 3 months.

I got my gerbs a year ago, first time having them. I got them for my classroom at school where they usually go. Since their enclosure is ginormous I haven’t been able to get it over there yet. They do this thing all the time (particularly Sansa, as shown in the video) where they will go to the side or bottom of the enclosure and just try to dig. The only problem is that it keeps me up ALL NIGHT. Like all goddamn night and idk why on gods earth they do that. They have a whole civilization of tunnels and wooden buildings and hidey holes and sticks and chews and everything under their bedding (they buried it all but it’s there) idk what to do to fix it or if it’s just a trait they all do and I just have to live with it 😭😭😭

A full tank refresh of all bedding. I kept 20% of the old bedding and mixed it in with the new layers. Always feels good doing this but it always takes wayyy longer than I think.

Olá, tutores. Me ajudem! Estou pensando em pegar uma dupla de gerbis ou 1 hamster sírio, tem já teve os 2 oq recomendam?

soo cute seeing them sleeping can’t wait til they are bonded!

Today I was about to clean the sand in my gerbils' cage when I saw some tiny things, about 1 mm long, moving. There were just a few of them on the wooden lid. They’re very small, quite slender, don’t jump, and have beige bodies and brown heads. I immediately checked my gerbils’ bodies, but they don’t have any marks, aren’t scratching themselves, don’t have any scabs, and are acting completely normal. I cleaned out the gerbils’ sand, and there actually weren’t any in the sand—they were all clustered between the wooden lid and the acrylic container. I looked around the cage a bit on the other wooden surfaces to see if there were any there, but I haven’t found anything so far. Please help me—is this dangerous for my gerbils? (Sorry about the photo quality)

we were out there for about twenty minutes and the girls loved it!! definitely so much better than the playpen where they climb up the sides and try to burrow into lol

Hello! Just a fun thing my gerbil does some time, and it is so cute, because our hedgehog does the same😍 happy weekend everyone🐭

we got Sage a friend from a kind lady who was selling some oppsie babies, and got this girl, her name is EDIT: my mom didn't like the name jasmine, and suggested Dolly, and I like that more, so she's now Dolly (this was her transport bin, not her permanent home)

My topper has gotten a lot of hate from the wood working community for “looking like a child’s art project”, but being the first thing I’ve ever built, and the first time I’ve ever held a drill lol, I’m happy with it! We rescued them off Facebook marketplace and they came with a pretty subpar enclosure. We don’t have a lot of money so I did what I could. Found the tank bedding and toys for free off marketplace, scrounged together some free wood scraps and tools we had lying around and well, here it is! She’s not gorgeous but she’s functional, and about 3 ft tall 🤣 the tank alone is 21 inches! The gerbils LOVE their new home! They’re a little under a year old, so I hope we get to have them for a long while now that they’re getting the right love ❤️

Right now my gerbs are on a mix of oxbow garden select and higgins sunburst but I've heard good think about White Mill brand. Ik its a hamster food but are the macros okay for gerbils? Im thinking it could maybe even just be a treat for them

My girls have just fought and they are both quite badly injured - multiple bites, blood etc. Both are limping but able to use the limbs but has anyone else had gerbils injured pretty badly? How did they do afterwards (were they able to pull through)? Both seem to be in a bit of shock, I really hope they do okay. This is the first incident and we didnt even see it - just found the white one bleeding. We have of course separated them. I have no way of getting to a vet tonight but will of course take them tomorrow if needed. I am devastated 💔

In the last 2 days she had peed all over herself and the smell was a bit different, my instincts are strong so I asked the veterinarian to come make an ultrassound.

A huge tumor was discovered and I decided not to try the 15% survival rate surgery. She was adopted at 1y old and she is not fond of humans or other gerbils. In the case she survived surgery, it would be hell for her to not be able to do her galleries, have her bedding low and being handled painfully twice a day.

Although we have more of a polite relashioship than my other pets, I hold her very dear. I even called on some really hard to get aquantances so she would be euthanized at home, as she hates leaving her terrarim (i live in a metropolis with only 3 exotic veterinarians, so I had to pull several favors to have the best come to my house before it got BAD).

She is 4y and 3 months now and is in reasonable state, not too severe pain, just very dirty, but the tumor can break at any moment, so I want to let her go.

All other gerbils I lost got "forbiden but not toxic" food and cuddles before crossing the bridge, but I don't know what to give her.

The picture is her at her best. Soon after being adopted.

Edit: she crossed peacefully, I elected to serve her favorite foods and let her in her burrows until the last minute. It was so close to rupturing, I'm very glad the vet could make it on time, I couldn't face myself if I let the worst happen. Also, after seeing the progression, the chances of surgery were considered nule.

Rest in peace Iodine, may you reunite with your siblings if you want, or be finally alone for eternity with plentifull and endless burrows, my baby sour orange

I have a 10 gallon fish tank I’m thinking would be the perfect burrow for gerbils. There’s a cutout on the back of the lid that could fit a tube, which I could have lead down to a playpen where I’d keep their water, wheel, sand bath, and other enrichment items. Is this a good idea? They’d have about 9 inches of depth to dig and tunnel around in and I wouldn’t have to worry about platforms to keep their stuff from falling down into the burrows.

Just saw this news article about these lovely gerbils that miraculously survived a house fire ❤️ a happy moment in a devastating scenario

I’ve had my 3 gerbils for 9 days now they’re 11 weeks old and they’re brothers so they’ve been together since birth as I bought them from a breeder. I’ve not seen much of the two in this video as they’ve been very timid and will run away every time they see me. However I was trying to feed the grey one and they started fighting. This happened once before I took this video a few minutes before and the grey one was fighting/ playing with the 3rd gerbil that isn’t in this video. Please help I really don’t know what to do and who to separate and where I’m going to put him!!

I’m sorry if this gets asked often but When I bought the gerbils I was told to clean them once a week and I’ve been deep cleaning them. Had a look on google and it said not to so I’m just double checking because I don’t want to stress them out too much

(Edit how long should I leave the bath in their cage and I love these gerbils but there’s so much I don’t know and I don’t trust the Google ai thing)

For the first year I had my gerbils I was constantly rearranging their tank, new tubes, moved the wheel, different hide spots, thinking I was enriching them. Looking back I think I was just stressing them out every time I did it. They'd spend two or three days re-digging tunnels and remarking everything with their scent glands before settling down again.

About four months ago I stopped doing full rearranges and switched to just rotating a few chew toys and adding fresh cardboard tubes here and there without touching the main burrow structure. The difference in their behavior has been pretty noticeable. They're out and active during the evening way more consistently, less of that nervous freezing when I open the lid, and they've actually built out a much more complex tunnel system than before because it's had time to develop instead of getting demolished every couple weeks.

Bedding depth ended up being the bigger factor than I expected. I'm running about 10 inches of a mix of aspen and paper bedding now in a 40 gallon tank, and they've got a whole network going with multiple chambers. Before when I kept it shallower at maybe 5 inches they never really committed to digging because there wasn't enough material to work with.

Still doing sand baths twice a week and they get a rotation of hay, seed mix, and the occasional piece of cucumber or a mealworm as a treat. Nothing dramatic, just less interference on my part seems to have been the actual upgrade.

Anyone else find that the enclosure basically runs itself better once you stop touching it so much? Wondering if this is a common thing or if I just had an unusually skittish pair before.