Is cleaning habitats ever going to be fixed?

[littlebunnylover]

I have issues with my habitats being dirty, and looking through the discussions I can see tons of people also have this problem. So far it's been happening mostly with the Common Warthogs in the Squeezing the Margins scenario, and the Indian Peafowl in the Power Struggle scenario. The animals are happy with the amount of space they have and their water is perfectly clean/connected to a functioning water pump. Yet their cleanliness frequently goes down to around 50% or so, and they get mass disease outbreaks. I call the keepers over but they refuse to clean in time to stop it. I have the diseases that they get fully researched. I have keepers whose only checked off job function is cleaning, and whose work zone only includes one habitat. That does not seem to be helping at all. Unlike in Zoo Tycoon 2, I can't zoom down and clean it up myself, so I just have to wait anxiously as the cleanliness percentage creeps down and the outbreaks begin. I worry about the sick animals and it's just a pretty awful problem.

[iloveyourzoos]

I think I saw that in one of the scenarios you have to remove the water (even if in range of a water cleaning system), place a water pipe, and give the keepers a chance to clean up the bottom of the river.

I also find in general that if there are lots of animals -- even if they have enough space -- the keepers have trouble keeping up out of sheer workload. so you might try thinning the herd a bit too and see if that helps.

Good luck!

[MrHappy]

You probably already did this but just in case..... Also change your vet habitat visits to Monthly. Hopefully this helps.

[littlebunnylover]

Hmm, I didn't try removing the water and letting them clean it, but I don't think that's the issue here. If it is, there's a glitch in the cleanliness percentage and the heat map- when they do clean the habitat, cleanliness goes up to 100%, and there's no red on the water on the heat map, so according to the game, the bottom of the water is clean.

I also find that this happens in habitats with lots of animals, but I simply don't think that that ought to be the case. If we have enough keepers and they're dedicated to caring for a habitat, we should be able to have them clean frequently so that this doesn't become an issue- especially when the animals are completely happy with their amount of space and their population size. The game provides no solution other than just getting rid of some animals or putting up with near-constant epidemics, and that makes no sense- with enough keepers scheduled properly, cleanliness shouldn't be a problem like this.

I'm not sure if I changed my vet visits to monthly or not- I'll try that if I haven't yet. I don't imagine that would solve the issue, though, since the outbreaks are a result of the lack of cleanliness, and vets don't clean.