So this happened

[Sauzo]

When I switched from aspen to cypress mulch, I was amazed! It holds moisture much better, as well as odors. Cypress is amazing at odor control, and I bet orchid is the same. When I used aspen, the smell of poo or pee was horrendous, but now that I switched to cypress mulch, I can't even tell sometimes and I have to poke around to make sure they didn't urinate anywhere.
Of course, humidity control is much better as well.

Thats funny because i actually like the smell of the aspen better. To me it doesnt hold the poo/pee smell once you spot clean it. It's easy to see where to spot clean and it seems to soak it up better than Reptichips. Problem i ran into with Reptichips is it smelled like a swamp after a couple weeks and for a retic, it was made even worse by the amount of pee. I couldnt really see exactly where to spot clean unless it had urate in it and being the Reptichips were bigger chunks, the liquid would easily seep down to the cage floor and spread. The aspen seems to soak it up quicker with very little spread so i just use my hand like a crane and scoop up the wet/discolored spot and its good. No more smell.

Cypress works well to but from i have been told, once cypress dries out, it is next to impossible to get it to reabsorb water so you cant let it ever dry completely out. And as for aspen molding like so many people say, i have yet to see it happen and i mist the aspen once a week. I think it depends on the cage. I dont have issues with humidity with aspen as long as i mist it once a week. In fact it's easier to control for me than Reptichips as that stuff would peg the humidity and create so much, i had water on the sides and roof of the cage for days. Then it would dry out and be too dry. And then trying to find poops in it was a chore as my snakes always buried their poops in the stuff or it just sank down between the pieces.

Reptichips still is good stuff but for me, it was a lot more work to deal with than aspen and with either i didnt have a low humidity issue which is why i went back to aspen. Easier for me to deal with plus i dont have to prep it to use it, just throw it in the cages, mist it down initially and im good to go.