I have a chance to get a free 40 breeder tank, just gotta pick it up. It will barely fit where I have my snake now, and I will have to relocate the fish, but it's doable.

My snake is a Solomon Island ground boa, male, about 20+ inches right now and may grow to 3 feet (if I'm lucky). He mostly hangs out in a fake branch but occasionally starts nosing around, getting up against the glass. The viv is a 12x12x18, it seemed to suit him fine at first but he has grown a bit since I got him. The way he starts nosing sometimes - and he does it more frequently now - is making me think he's outgrowing his viv.

Now, I keep reading that sometimes enclosures are "too big" for the herps we put in them; the critter will feel "lost" or "confused." Here's what I'm not getting: In the snake's original, wild microhabitat - in my case, this would be a rainforest - he has a very large area to slither around in, yet probably chooses a particular spot because the conditions there are ideal. Why does he not feel lost there, yet would feel lost in a large enclosure? Is it that he wouldn't know where to find the water? (Eventually, I'll figure out his fave spots and put the water close to him anyway.)

Heating: It's hard to make any real heat gradient in my viv, and he doesn't have any real basking spots. The average temp in there is just below 80 degrees, and that seems to be fine, but he's almost never on the ground. I'll think it's too hot, but then I touch the substrate and I can barely feel the UTH that's off to one side (under the glass). The substrate is not too deep, barely an inch of aspen shavings. Humidity's usually good, especially now that I've added the 3/4 cover of tin foil over the screen top.

I don't know if SIGBs need to bask, or even care to since they are nocturnal, though I imagine he could benefit from the right kind of light. But then comes another question: photoperiods. I leave every morning right around sunrise, and open up the blinds for the one window. Then I get home in the afternoon, and turn on the lights when it gets dark out. I live in an efficiency so I don't have a separate room for the boa. I do open the bathroom door so that it blocks a lot of light from his home, but it's still fairly bright in there even at nighttime, until all the lights go off around midnight (yes, I sleep an average of 6 hours a day).

Should I try covering the viv at night so that he gets a "longer," more natural span of nightfall?

Honestly, he looks plenty healthy, already shed once, and he's a ready eater. He's a nervous captive and would probably prefer never being handled, but he more than tolerates it and appears to be pretty stress-free. But I want to put together a really good setup for him that will last him a long while. If I get him that 40, I'll hunt for a good, long branch (or branches), sandblast them at work and drape them in leaves. I could put a live plant in there as well, to help with cover and humidity. I don't know if he would make use of all the new space and actually explore any of it, or if he'd just pick a branch to hang out on throughout the day.

There are very few caresheets for these snakes on the Net, and though there is little variety among them, I like to amass as much information as possible. I still have not found a book that gives more than a mention of a Pacific Island boa, though I've heard Mark O'Shea's book has a few tidbits on them.