Sky Box, Shelf Hides, & other questions

I'm planning a deep clean and substrate change on all cages this weekend when I also intend to install sky boxes. Do you typically install these with the opening of the hide oriented towards the opening of the enclosure or towards the sides of the enclosure?

Up to now, I've had unsecured hides on both sides of the basking shelf. One of my boas pushes these out frequently and seems to like looking down from the bottom of the skewed hide. I don't mind picking them up or realigning daily, but do you all secure these to the basking shelf? If so, how?

With the sky box going in on the cool side, do I even need the basking shelf hide on the cool side?

I have the F10 cleaner, but I've never worked with it. My plan is to use the recommended F10/water mix on the insides of the empty cage, but use the usual soapy water on hides, water bowls, and anything else plastic or rock. What about the wood, bark, and bamboo items though? None of them are soiled at all, but should they get the F10 treatment or would a wipe down suffice?

Going fully bioactive is another huge project that I don't want to get into on this thread, but does anyone have good results with putting live plants in a non-bioactive enclosure?

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Originally Posted by Nick_MD

Going fully bioactive is another huge project that I don't want to get into on this thread, but does anyone have good results with putting live plants in a non-bioactive enclosure?

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I can't help much with the sky hide thing because I don't do that for BP's but I would say not to do live plants if you aren't doing bioactive. The problem you are going to run into is that every time you replace substrate, you are disrupting the plants, especially roots, and they are likely to easily get knocked over by a big heavy snake and die. With bioactive even, you want to give plants a solid month or two to grow strong roots before you introduce the animal(s). Even an adult crested gecko (much lighter than a BP) can absolutely wreck plants that haven't had time to become established (speaking from experience). If you put REALLY deep substrate, you could put potted plants down into the substrate still in pots, that way removing substrate wouldn't mess up their root structure as bad, but if the substrate isn't deep enough, the snake is going to knock over the pot. I'd save yourself the trouble and wait to do it full bioactive or not at all.

I'm just here to comment on the plant part of your question... There was another thread a little while back where we discussed that you can put plants in an enclosure if you leave them in pots and just place the pots in the enclosure. This is the route I would go if you aren't ready to or don't want to go bioactive, but still want plants. Plants can help keep up humidity and provide enrichment, so I think it's worth a try if you are interested.


https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...thon-enclosure

A worthwhile reminder/mention is to sterilize the soil and process the plants before putting them in the enclosure. What I would do is remove the plant from the soil, microwave the soil for 2 minutes, and leave the plant underwater overnight. A lot of people do a diluted bleach and dunk their plants in it, but this isn't safe for some plants (like ferns or moss, I think).