tank size

Smulkin and I are still learning and trying different things to see what works. I'm sure it'll be much easier maintaining humidity once the weather warms up. Our springs and summers are generally pretty humid, and we don't have central air, so the humidity inside our house is directly proportional to what's going on outside. Hopefully by next fall we'll have the whole humidity issue sorted out, either by switching enclosures or tweaking what we have to the point that it won't be an issue.

I'm partial to the boids myself, but I'm sure Smulkin and our boys will want a colubrid or two at some point. I'm not sure what WV laws are with regard to snake ownership (which is a little embarrassing since I am a legal assistant - I should probably do some research on the subject). Everything we own can be purchased at pet stores in our area, so I know we're safe for now. I've also seen corn snakes and a couple other types of colubrids at the local pet stores.

Hehe - I confess I am already eyeing some stuff but enough on that. The humidity seemed problematic until we threw the Con-Tac paper on the top. We monitored temps and humidity and with a razor cut a right-triangle out of the con-tac paper one corner at a time. We went from low-humidity problems to humidity being too high and wound up taking the repti-flows out of the smaller cages. Neph still has hers running in the critter cage.

The height of the cage makes for an interesting temperature gradient in another dimension. The warmest basking spot can be reached via one of those "poseable branches" which has been twisted around to allow just that. THe warm hide is below this and the far bottom is the cool hide which averages about 78. Twice so far though she's gone nuts swimming and "hugged" the reptiflow clear over to the edge of the bowl soaking the tank. We replaced the green bowl with a glass one with a flat spot near the center and inward curving rim to try and counter it. With very minimal misting her cage holds fairly steady in the low 60%'s.

http://www.angelfire.com/ultra/bramm...age_afrock.jpg

Heck of a set up! When do I move in?

Wow! Beautiful viv!!! Will you come do mine? LOL

PS - I'll bet Tigergenesis goes nuts over this one! :)

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Originally Posted by JLC

Marla....in Georgia...isn't it that you can't own anything native to GA? If that's the case, you can still own a wide variety of western colubrids, including all the ssp of bullsnakes and gophers. Pine snakes are the only Pituophis native to Georgia. Unless they have regs that also try and keep "foreign" snakes out for fear of them getting loose in the ecosystem??? If that's the case, then you're pretty much FUBAR'd on all fronts. :(

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Yes, it's supposed to be nothing native to Georgia except venomous non-pit-vipers, which means I can have all the Eastern Coral Snakes I care to catch -- guess how many that is! However, the regs are written so that they actually say "no corn snakes" as opposed to "no corn snakes native to Georgia" and you have to be very careful because the state "wildlife expert" doesn't know a gopher snake from a rat snake.

If I were to start keeping colubrids, I'd print and laminate reference cards with name, species, and locale and stick 'em right on the cages in case I got raided as people sometimes do. Otherwise the "expert" could very well come in and decide a Western Hognose was an Eastern Hognose and have 'em haul off the whole crew and give me a huge fine.

That aquarium backdrop stuff in the background is pretty cool; - can be bought by the foot at your local pet place - I wrapped it around the 3 non-facing sides and the result seemed to be a more secure snake (or seeming). I'm not sure if it was feeling less exposed (from all sides) or more related to color (beat the hell out of the harsh white background from the walls) - but there was a lot more activity in the tank. I know there could be hundreds of reasons for that though in temp, humidity, the gurgling noise from the repti-flo etc etc. When we moved the baby balls into thier individual setups we did the same in terms of covering 3 sides of the glass - and it does SEEM (my empirical data. . . bwaaahaha) to make em feel a tad more secure.

One note on that though - if you use a lot of dark objects, substrate and even background in your setup it will result in a bump in temperatures (the same way asphalt will heat up beyond ambient temps in direct sunlight) - so when you make changes that don't seem like they would affect much still a good idea to monitor those temp zones.

And gracias, all!

Smulkin, that is a great-looking setup! Heat gradient, humidity gradient, places to hide, and aesthetically pleasing too. Very nice.

Wow....Nice set up. If I was a herp that's the home I would want to live in....Talk about some spoiled herp's!

Only downside is if she doesn't want to come out and play you aren't going to make her without yanking a bunch of stuff out of the way. Seems only to be the case during her sheds though - the's been in the arm hide about 2 days now gearing up for her new skin. Otherwise she'll usually make a dash up the branch when she hears the top open and sees the light shift!