Substrate...

[jotay]

What do you use in your racks? And why?

[tmlowe5704]

What do you use in your racks? And why?

Aspen. Cheap and looks good. My snakes tend to move around more when on Aspen too.

[frankykeno]

Well hon we aren't in racks yet but in our plastic tubs we have switched to newspaper. We did aspen for ages but quite honestly with more and more snakes the newspaper is just way more efficient. No more digging through aspen doing the daily turd search (and gee what fun that is LOL). The snakes don't seem to care one whit about the change of substrate, it's easier on us and I don't need to sweep/vac the snake room nearly as often now that there isn't aspen floating about settling on everything. Oh and I get the newspaper from a local grocer for free.

[Adam_Wysocki]

Unprinted newsprint.

1. You can see "everything" on it ... even the tiniest amounts of urine, feces, and little drops of blood .... organic matter produced by the snakes can't "hide".

2. When it's clean, it's clean .... it's cheap enough that it can be totally replaced every single time it's soiled ... no issues with "spot cleaning" and "hoping" that you get it all.

-adam

[RichardA]

Hey Adam,

could you share where you get unprinted newspaper?

[Nate]

Adam 2 questions I have for you.

1, any suggestions on where to find unprinted newsprint?

2, is newspaper absorbent enough to not cause problems? Every time i've seen newspaper get wet, it just gets wet and stays wet, so when your snakes do the doo, the newspaper doesn't really absorb it the way I hoped it would.

in saying that, I realize it probably won't cause any problems if I check the enclosures on a daily basis, which is probably what you do?

[Adam_Wysocki]

I order my paper by the pallet from www.uline.com ... I'm sure that they do smaller quantities as well.

Most of my racks are open air, so drying isn't a problem ... but even in the few plastic and melamine racks that I have left, as long as there are enough holes and the boxes are checked daily, it's not a problem.

If you're using a substrate other than paper because of the drying issue, your snakes are still sitting in a ton of ogranic matter until the cage gets cleaned ... with paper, you have to clean it immediately, so you're snakes enclosure gets cleaner sooner ... not so good for a busy keeper, but much better for the snakes.

-adam

[Schlyne]

I use regular newspaper right now. I will probably be switching to unprinted newsprint or kraft paper from uline in the future.

I've used the aspen sani chips before, but I wasn't enthused about needing to vacuum or sweep up every time I reached into the rack to do something.

[Adam_Wysocki]

I've used the aspen sani chips before, but I wasn't enthused about needing to vacuum or sweep up every time I reached into the rack to do something.

Ditto that ... several years later and I'm still finding the stray chip here or there ... when I switched to unprinted paper, I was amazed at how much more I could "see".

-adam

[Laooda]

Shelby AKA April, also recentlly posted that she uses it... You can see it in her post Snake pix volume II.. On top of what Adam said, I think the snakes look good on it! If I ever get to the rack stage, that's what I'll use... fo sho!