Brazilian Rainbow Boa substrate, what do you use?

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Originally Posted by carlisleishere

I've used aspen before and my BRB liked it, but it molded really fast. I just kept him on paper. It's mostly just personal preference. Some snakes just don't like aspen either. I have a BP that WILL NOT touch aspen. He thrashes around and everything. It seems like you're doing everything right. I also agree with you. The are super easy to keep. Way easier than a ball python as long as BRBs are kept in tubs, not tanks.

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Wow that's crazy that yours thrashes around on aspen! My BRB's certainly weren't like that, they just seemed unsettled at first. Like I said, all good now!

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Originally Posted by BFT12890

This thread makes me really happy to read. as soon as my rack system is complete im getting a BRB. Ive wanted one for a while but have been intimidated by everyone saying they are a pain to keep. glad to hear they really arent that bad!

EDIT. OP glad to hear that they are all settled in for you :] are 41qt's sufficient for life??

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yes 41 quarts should be good, as Paul @ Moonlight Boas said. the one female we have is rather large for her 32 quart (I *think* she's around 2300 grams, can't remember the exact number) and I would like to move her up, but like I said she really didn't want to be moved, it seemed. She started eating again about 2 days after I switched her back to the 32 quart, so maybe it was just too much room for her.

And it's definitely true, their care requirements are blown way out of proportion, and YES I do feel they are easier to keep than ball pythons, as I've literally had ZERO feeding problems aside from the bin-switching fiasco. They will literally eat anything, any day, any time. No refusals, no dawdling around, they strike and coil every time and swallow hungrily.

The only reason I wouldn't recommend them for beginners is because of their tendency to be bitey as babies. I wouldn't want to tell somebody a BRB would be a perfect snake and then have them get bit a handful of times and turned off snakes. When we first got ours, I took a pretty good chomp right to the apple of my cheek! That's enough to scare any snake beginner, I think. (Even though most of us here run to get the camera when we get bit :P)

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Originally Posted by meeistom

We use coco fiber that we mist daily. Keeps the humidity up and is easy to spot to clean. Plus we get it super cheap as well.

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I can't find cypress mulch up here (reptile supplies are a PITA to get in Canada, it seems) as someone else suggested, and like I said I wasn't a fan of the Eco-Earth (which I believe is the coco fibre you use, or something similar) because it got stuck too much to the water bowls and stuck to the snakes and got too compact and we would have to stir it too often, so like I said I'm giving up and going with aspen.

If any of you are thinking of getting BRB's, I highly recommend them!

I think Mark Mandic uses cypress mulch for his ball pythons, maybe you can shoot him an email and ask where he got it?

Thanks, didn't see that this thread had been updated. Mark Madic is pretty far away from me though :P

I think it's just my small town that has a problem with getting supplies in. Can't find 32oz rodent bottles, sphagnum moss, cypress mulch, it took me nearly 6 months to find mixing tubs for my rat rack! And of course once I did find them, I ordered 6 thinking if one ever cracked or got chewed through, I could just re-order more. But nooooooope, Home Hardware has discontinued them! So I best pray that none of them break.

The people at our Home Depot are actually LESS than helpful too. I tried ordering the bins off them and they couldn't figure out how to do it in the system.

Siiiiiiigh. So I have to go to the big city to get everything, and that's usually a pretty big hunt :P

Someone on RC gave me the idea to use shop towel though, for the BPs. I'm considering using that, because I'm getting super sick of having to stick my hands down my pants and pick out the little bits of shredded aspen that itch me all day!