Hide size for adult coastal male

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I'm curious what some of you use for hide size for adult male coastal carpet pythons.

I'm working on a long-term cage for my boy who is still quite small, but wondering if he is likely to be able to fit into RBI large hides for life or if he will need to go bigger, specifically for a sky hide.

Current plan is to add a sky hide with the bracket from RBI for their large hide and wondering if he is likely to outgrow it or not.

Picture tax paid in the form of him using his current sky hide (RBI Small with mirror brackets) to shed a few months ago.


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[Reinz]

I was glad to hear of the Skyhide mount that RB is making. But unfortunately it is too small for my adult Carpets.

My 3 Coastals are 8 feet long, with the oldest, Lizzy at 9 years. They all take the XL hide, not to be confused with the Jumbo which is huge.

Even my 7 foot Jungles take the XL.

Hopefully VE/RB will produce an XL mount down the road.



Lizzy, Coastal Carpet

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I was glad to hear of the Skyhide mount that RB is making. But unfortunately it is too small for my adult Carpets.

My 3 Coastals are 8 feet long, with the oldest, Lizzy at 9 years. They all take the XL hide, not to be confused with the Jumbo which is huge.

Even my 7 foot Jungles take the XL.

Hopefully VE/RB will produce an XL mount down the road.



Lizzy, Coastal Carpet

That's what I suspected was going to happen, ha.

Worst case, I'll make my own, I suppose. It worked very nicely for the small hide. Are you using the mirror clips for yours there? Or something else?

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[Reinz]

That's what I suspected was going to happen, ha.

Worst case, I'll make my own, I suppose. It worked very nicely for the small hide. Are you using the mirror clips for yours there? Or something else?

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Yes I use mirror clips, but learned a few lessons.

I now only use the big, 3/4 inch clips, especially for larger snakes. As seen below, Esmarelda, a 7 foot JCP, forced a coil in that hide which is not tall enough. She was strong enough to snap the ears off some of those small clips. Along with that and the hide flexing, it gave way. You can see the hide sitting on the shelf right below the mounting clips.



I also learned that installing the clips BEFORE assembling the cage is exponentially easier than installing them after the cage is together.


This is the reason I go ahead and install clips for next size up as well. When they outgrow the large hide I simply remove the clips on one of “width” sides and then slide in an XL hide.

[pretends2bnormal]

Yes I use mirror clips, but learned a few lessons.

I now only use the big, 3/4 inch clips, especially for larger snakes. As seen below, Esmarelda, a 7 foot JCP, forced a coil in that hide which is not tall enough. She was strong enough to snap the ears off some of those small clips. Along with that and the hide flexing, it gave way. You can see the hide sitting on the shelf right below the mounting clips.



I also learned that installing the clips BEFORE assembling the cage is exponentially easier than installing them after the cage is together.


This is the reason I go ahead and install clips for next size up as well. When they outgrow the large hide I simply remove the clips on one of “width” sides and then slide in an XL hide.

Thanks a bunch! That's really helpful.

Do you have a link to the large clips? Or did.you just get then in store?

For now, I'm setting it up with just the Large hide. The hangar bracket would make it tough to do that right now and the large is probably 1 to 1 and a half sizes too big right now. (He has probably outgrown the small size that was in the cage he used to have, but the mediums he has now are still very big for him, though he does use to oversized large sky hide.)

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[Reinz]

I just picked mine up at Walmart in the aisle with nuts and bolts. It’s been over a year since I got them, but at that time they were always out or just had one or two packs. Home Depot was the same way, plus they had them in a weird spot which made it hard to find. Fortunately I was accumulating them way in advance, but it was still frustrating. Maybe buying online would be easier.



This is what Walmart has.

[Reinz]

A few things to add and mix up.

That packaging may be wrong in the above pic. Those clips are 3/4 inch wide not 1/4. Unless they are referring to the height. But I was positive that those are 40 pound clips, not 20.

So I went to Amazon and the plastic clips I saw were all small and called 1/4 inch and 20 pounds.

I did not spend much time looking because I saw some potentially better options for my 2 cages on order. There were various METAL fixtures that looked good. The ones I liked best are called Z clips.

Now we can’t post advertising, so I will just post a pic.



I love having the strength of just one full rail, and metal at that.

They come 2 pieces per unit, so you will need 2 units- one piece for the back, and 1 piece for each side, thus 3 pieces per hide.

[pretends2bnormal]

A few things to add and mix up.

That packaging may be wrong in the above pic. Those clips are 3/4 inch wide not 1/4. Unless they are referring to the height. But I was positive that those are 40 pound clips, not 20.

So I went to Amazon and the plastic clips I saw were all small and called 1/4 inch and 20 pounds.

I did not spend much time looking because I saw some potentially better options for my 2 cages on order. There were various METAL fixtures that looked good. The ones I liked best are called Z clips.

Now we can’t post advertising, so I will just post a pic.

Oh! I saw those metal clips. What I never could figure out is what the gap they needed to have for the hide to fit snuggly and not be too loose/too tight.

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[Reinz]

The smaller clips gave no indication of gap. But these longer rail type Z clip Look (?) like they will work.

I’m going to order some. At least with Amazon I can return them if they don’t work.