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This is something which I feel fairly strongly about, odd as that might seem when it comes to a discussion about substrates...
There is nothing wrong with particulate substrates when they are used appropriately. Used inappropriately, they're virtually guaranteed to kill something eventually.
First- it's absurd to state that any animal is so fragile as to be unable to encounter a patch of sand or dirt. If they were, there would never be a sustained population of any of these animals in nature, they'd be dead within a generation... Little piles of impacted leopard geckos littering the mideast.
However, the nature of the substrates that are frequently used in captivity is not identical to the nature of similar materials found in the wild. Leopard geckos do not come from the loose, windswept sand dues of the Sahara, they live on dirt and rocks, but the dirt and rocks they are found on is frequently compacted by the natural elements. Loose sand can be dangerous... pour some water on it, let it dry... Now it's compact sand. It still allows the animals to dig around, is still far softer than the bottom of a glass tank with a paper towel over it and it looks much better for a display enclosure. Anyone else familiar with the problems that birds develop if they have only regular perches of a uniform shape and width? Do you really think the unyeilding bottom of a ten gallon tank can't have a similar effect on a lizard?
Prey size is a big issue too... people need to stop being so worried about making life "easy" on their lizards... Feeding two week crickets to a leopard gecko which is more than a month, maybe a month and a half old is simply absurd. I don't care if the big ones make noises or if they hop around too much so your gecko has to chase them around... Most of the time an animal becomes impacted, it's because some dink is feeding them prey items which are about a quarter of the size they should be, forcing the lizard to move it's head close to the substrate when striking and leaving them with a mouthful of sand. Don't go overboard and try feeding a neonate leopard gecko a full grown hissing cockroach, but lay off the pinheads.
Calcisand is garbage.
Natural sand, either the fine mixes which are bagged and sold or the forty pound bags of playsand sold at home depot are both appropriate substrates for many desert dwelling herps, provided it's used appropriately.
This crusade against particulate substrates falls into the same group as the crusade about how pet stores are evil and importing animals is morally wrong... it's a load of hyped up bull that's promulgated by people who don't have the facts and haven't thought things through but that has somehow become popular to repeat as a mantra.
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