Vivarium Idea - Safe?

[blushingball419]

First of all, congrats on your new bp and awesome choice for a name!! I'm actually planning on using the same name for one of my snakes at some point.

To reiterate what was already said, feeding related cage aggression shouldn't be a problem. I feed all of my snakes in their enclosures and I've never had a problem. As long as you handle him a couple other times during the week, he won't associate his cage opening with food, and they mainly go by smell anyway. I also use aspen and eco earth coco fiber as substrates and I've never had a problem with that either. If you think about it, they eat off of dirt in the wild all the time, so their bodies are meant to handle it. I would be more worried if he got a mouthful of aspen, but even that probably wouldn't be too much of an issue. I would definitely recommend that you use eco earth as well since you're using a tank, and I've found that it holds humidity the best. And no, him burrowing in it is perfectly fine, and if he has some good hides he shouldn't want to burrow much at all (I noticed you said you only had one hide for him, he should have 2, one on each side of the tank).

I would also advise against making a "pond" for him. In my opinion, I think it would be difficult to clean and maintain, and you would just be making more work for yourself. They do like a big enough water dish to soak in every once and awhile, but even though they can swim it doesn't mean they enjoy it. Obviously it's up to you though

Good luck with your little guy!!