I agree with crawdad - you should have plenty of room for hides. They shouldn't be oversized - just big enough for the snake to squeeze into! Like he said if they want to get anywhere, they'll just go over it. It's a much better idea to have hides on both the hot and the cool side, so the snake doesn't have to choose between feeling secure, and thermal regulation. No hides at all sounds horrible...it would make for an extremely stressed out snake.