Cleaning Issue(smell)HELP

Back in June I moved in with my step brother and his wife to go to school. After I was settled in she bought some air fresheners to go on that side of the house. She says she can smell my reptiles. I want to be the best roommate possible, but this is becoming a problem. I have 2 snakes in a fully enclosed rack(6 tubs-41qt) with 8-1/4" holes burned into the front and one in a modified 20g long with a plexiglass door and holes for ventilation. I've just been spot cleaning with dechlorinated water for the last couple months. Feces and urates are generally removed within 24 hours of excretion. Today she said she could smell my reptiles as soon as she opened her bedroom door on the other side of the house. She has a nose like a bloodhound. That honestly made me feel bad. I'm going out to buy a spray bottle just for a 1/32 bleach solution to clean my tank and tubs. I think after I clean the tubs today I'm going to move the snake from the cage into the rack. It's been nearly 3 months quarantined and I'm ok with that. What else can I do to help with the smell? Could switching from paper towels to aspen or cypress mulch help to absorb the smell? Should I invest in a Scentsy type wax burner and just leave it on all the time?

Please help! I'm living here for free to attend a 30,000$ vet tech school, and I don't want to mess this up.

I'd say she's full of crap. Snakes themselves do not have a scent. Sounds like you're cleaning up the stinky urates/feces quickly, but if you're only spot-cleaning, the tubs might be retaining some scent. You should be washing out and disinfecting the enclosures once a month. I use Windex when I spot-clean, then once a month I wash tubs in the bathtub with dish soap, and wipe down tanks with Clorox Clean-up.

Talk to your step-brother and send them to this post once you get more people confirming they don't smell unless there's poo/urates. You can use a bedding if you like, but it's likely she'll complain about the smell of the clean bedding too.

yea man shes just complaining .. i keep my snakes in a clostet in my house and when u go in the closet u cant smell nothing unless u stick ur head in the tub .. u dont have to go nuts shes just being a pain .. maybe she dont want the snakes in the house so she will complain to they get removed one of those type of people .. put them in ur room and close the door

Women have a better sense of smell than men. ( also better eyesight when it comes to distinguishing colours )

If you are only using water to clean then there may well be a residual smell.

Try a cage cleaner like the F10 brand or something.


dr del

As a woman with a superb sense of smell, I say she's full of it. If anything, she's smelling bedding if you use shavings, which I think is an awesome smell :). It sounds like she's smelling what she wants to smell. The brain is a powerful machine, and it's entirely possible it's manufacturing an odor if she has a strong fear/distaste of reptiles, but in actuality I doubt there's any smell at all.

While she may have a sensitive sense of smell, i also think that we as reptile keepers get accustomed to the smell and don't notice it. I use paper towel as substrate and clean within 12 hours of any mess. I use a 2-step cleaning process. First step - I use diluted Simple Green as my main cleaner because i think it does a good job of eliminating odors. Second step - i use either Health Habitat or F10. Between those 2 cleaners, they eliminate the majority of odors. Then for good measure, i use a high quality plugin from Yankee Candle or Bath and Body Works. The plugin definitely does the trick to mask any odors.

I think it is probably something along the lines of what Mootworm said. We used to have a hamster (back in the day) and I had a mouse when I was a kid. Well, my corn is on aspen and it drove me nuts for months bc I kept thinking It smelled like pee. It was just that I associated aspen with rodent pee smell.
Same with cypress chips. Smells kind of like a barn to me.
I have a VERY sensitive sense of smell and I have 4 reptiles in one room...no smell, promise.

I have 4 reptiles in our bedroom, no smell whatsoever except for my Yankee candle :) We also have 2 snakes in QT in the living room and a T., also no smell. Now, if you walk into our rodent room, there's definitely a smell, but it's a barn type smell, and I think barns have the best smell in the world. Right up there with Christmas trees and fabric softener lol. But I'm weird like that.

If you're breeding rodents, then it's understandable that she's smelling something. You can NOT get rid of that smell unless you have a sealed room and an air filtration system.

You might want to have a chat with her, see if it's the reptiles themselves she has an issue with rather than their 'odor'. Maybe you can even get her to handle them, or at least get accustomed to their presence.

I appreciate the input. I guess I'm gonna just have to keep things as clean as I can and hopefully she'll get over it. I had 3 snakes last Christmas when she and her husband offered me a place to live, and the first question was, "can I bring my snakes?" to which they said yes. I guess it's just foreign to her nose. I've got my bleach solution for cleaning. Are there any methods of making the room smell nice that I should avoid that may harm my animals? I want to stay away from candles because there are some days where I leave at 6am and don't come home until 10pm.

I'm one of those women with an impressive sense of smell - if a snake in a rack made a mess, I will know it just by walking by. I can't smell it across the house though.

First, you need to figure out what she's smelling as it may not be the reptiles or even their feces. It could be damp substrate - both wet cypress and spaghnum moss smell very "earthy" to me, though it's not a bad smell it is distinct. Even newspaper in a humid environment picks up an odor after a few days.

Second, it could be a smell that you've become used to over time. A while back I purchased a used hatchling rack and the tubs had a very distinct odor to them. I don't know what it was, but I do know that cleaning with dish soap and even wiping with Clorox wipes didn't remove it - but soaking in OxyClean did. The odor didn't register with the seller.

Third, is it possible to adjust the airflow in the house or isolate your room so any odors get vented outside instead of through the HVAC system?