Creative snake housing

[Snake Judy]

wow Gio and Judy, those vivs are amazing. i hope to build up to some beautiful displays like those some day.

a few quick questions:

-- how often to you have to clean them?

-- how are bugs and micro-organisms managed?

There's no "deep cleaning" needed in mine, which is nice. I spot clean feces because my bug populations aren't robust enough yet to deal with them quickly, but they handle anything that's left over, along with any mold or fungus. It's a few months in and the enclosure still smells fresh and pleasant, so I'm pretty confident about their effectiveness. Populations are kept in check by how much food is available. They'll die off when there are too many for the enclosure to sustain, and since ball pythons don't produce much waste I'm actually having a little trouble getting them booming. I've started adding in a cucumber slice now and then as extra sustenance in the hopes of boosting their numbers.

I love the idea of making a "bio-cube" or something along those lines with living plants, Kahlua would probably love it. Are there certain types of plants that would work better? They'd have to stay small enough to live comfortably in an enclosure, but also be large/resilient enough to not be crushed by a 2000g ball python.

So far I've had great luck with dracaenas. I've got a couple Dracaena compacta in mine. Sturdy and well-adapted to the conditions of a bp enclosure. The leaves are strong but flexible, so they're hard to break or crush. They do get quite big eventually, but they also grow very very slowly. If they're taking the place over in a year I'll just pull 'em out and replace them. I also have a prayer plant (Maranta leucoreura) that seems pretty happy. Any heat-tolerant tropicals should do okay. I place stones around the base to discourage uprooting. I also built little planters into the background of my enclosure specifically so that I'd have space for more delicate plants where she's less likely to crush them. I've been trying out different vines and creepers in them with varying degrees of success. I'm hoping some of them will take off and get really wild.