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  1. #1
    BPnet Veteran WrongPython's Avatar
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    Adventures in Snake Housing

    Figured I'd start my own thread à la jmcrook's since there will a good amount of caging/housing upgrades here in the relatively near future. My hope is that this thread will allow others to learn from my experiences and plan their own snake housing accordingly.

    Caging, heating, and lighting have been on my mind a lot lately. My longicauda is approaching the need for a housing upgrade, my Papuan carpet needs one, and I'm falling out of love with my Sonoran's heating and lighting situation. Said Sonoran used to be under an Arcadia Deep Heat Projector (DHP) before being moved into a 4'x2'x2' with an RHP. Since the move, she's been spending a far longer time basking -- she'll park herself on her basking shelf for days at a time sometimes-- and I feel like she could have more energy than she does. She almost feels like a pet rock some days, and a boa shouldn't feel like that!

    After quite a bit of recent research into snake heating and lighting, I've come to believe my Sonoran's lethargy stems from inadequately intense heating. While her RHP can bring her up to temperature, the IR-C heat it gives only goes skin-deep, and doesn't really penetrate her tissues to get her warm. Great for maintaining minimum ambient temperatures, but not for proper basking. It's more or less the same deal for my little Papuan carpet's heat mat. For what it's worth, the longicauda's DHP doesn't seem to be the best sole heat source either. While the heat it gives off is more penetrating, snakes just aren't as cued in to the IR-B it predominantly gives off as much as IR-A. So, the DHP seems better off as a nighttime heat backup or a complement to an IR-A predominant heat source (ie. a halogen basking bulb), and not as a sole heat source.

    With all of that in mind, I've come up with a new housing plan that I should be able to enact soon. Said plan is 4'x2'x2's for everyone with full spectrum heating and lighting -- UV lights and dimmable halogen basking spots at a minimum, with the possibility of a DHP as complementary/backup heating and JungleDawn LEDs to fill out the snake-visible light spectrum. The 4' Evolution cages from Maximum Reptile look like they'll do the job quite nicely on the new caging front given a bit of baby snake-proofing. In the meantime, I'm going to be reaching out to the manufacturer of my Sonoran's cage to see if they'd be able to provide me a screen that matches her cage's design. That way, I can retrofit her cage for an external heat bulb mount and avoid raising temperatures too much by having the bulb mounted to the ceiling inside the cage.

    ...well that turned into a bit of a ramble, haha. Wish me luck y'all -- hopefully I'll have some sweet new snake cages to show off soon!
    0.1 Sonoran Boa sigma​: "Adelita" ('19 Hypo het. leopard)
    1.0 Boa imperator longicauda: "Kuzco" ('19 het. anery)
    0.1 West Papuan Morelia spilota​: "Pandora" ('20)

  2. The Following 7 Users Say Thank You to WrongPython For This Useful Post:

    Bogertophis (07-08-2021),Erie_herps (06-22-2021),Gocntry (07-09-2021),Hugsplox (06-23-2021),jmcrook (06-22-2021),nikkubus (06-22-2021),Starscream (06-30-2021)

  3. #2
    BPnet Veteran WrongPython's Avatar
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    Re: Adventures in Snake Housing

    Operation: Pandora's Box is officially a go! The orders for her new 4'x2'x2', stand, and some artificial foliage are in, and the orders for lighting and Universal Rocks will go in as soon as I hammer out a few more details. Since she'll be living in this cage indefinitely, I decided to just go all-out and build a little slice of south Papuan savanna for her as best as I can. Wasur National Park in the Merauke Regency and the Trans-Fly savanna and grasslands are serving as my inspiration.

    Hopefully Pandora will enjoy her little slice of her native habitat, along with the new heating and lighting regimen. Since it will probably take the rest of the summer to collect everything and properly build it out, I think I'll be transitioning her out of her now-too-small quarantine tub to some temporary "summer quarters" in the meantime. The current plan is to put a heat bulb and her old heat mat (for back-up nighttime heat) on an old ten gallon tank I have. This will give her a little more room to stretch out, as well as some time to get used to basking under a bulb for daytime heat.

    I'm very curious to see how she responds to all of this. Adelita immediately started showing cryptic basking behavior when I first introduced her UV bulb, so it'll be interesting if Pandora does something similar. She won't be getting her UV until she moves into her 4'x2'x2', though, so her response could be different.
    0.1 Sonoran Boa sigma​: "Adelita" ('19 Hypo het. leopard)
    1.0 Boa imperator longicauda: "Kuzco" ('19 het. anery)
    0.1 West Papuan Morelia spilota​: "Pandora" ('20)

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    jmcrook (07-08-2021)

  5. #3
    Bogertophis's Avatar
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    Your observations about using the DHP heat source is very interesting. Thanks for sharing your updates here- always more for us to learn!
    Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
    Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

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    WrongPython (07-08-2021)

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