Shopping list for a colubrid enclosure?

[Bogertophis]

I've been primarily keeping colubrids for a long while & I greatly prefer glass tanks w/ screen tops: that's what I'd recommend you use for the kind of snake you're planning on. For one thing, colubrids need well-circulated fresh air & lower humidity than the boas & ball pythons do. Unless those making PVC cages are making them with colubrids in mind, which I doubt. You do NOT need an RHP + UTH....unless your house is really cold??? I see you're in Canada, what is the ambient room temperature where your cage will be? For comparison, my house thermostat is set to 70* in winter, & to 80* in summer. All my snakes have UTH & a few have black or red heat-lights* (on dimmers) for extra heat- but not any of my corn snakes. *In cool months I use dimmed warming lights for my little Aussie spotted python- she loves to bask, as do my Florida rat snakes & Trans Pecos rat snakes. In summer, the UTH is dimmed way down or even turned off for some.

I use only UTH (controlled Flexwatt), & the size depends on the cage size & how much warmth the snake needs...it's never more than 1/3 of the cage floor, & typically less than that.If you plan to buy only one cage for the life of the snake, a corn snake does nicely in a 40 gal. tank (18"w x 36"long x 17" tall), whereas a gopher snake gets bigger, is more active & is also more terrestrial than a corn snake, so a 50-60 gal. tank would be ideal. Corn snakes love branches, if you wedge them in their cage diagonally, they'll use them happily. If you wire a basket onto the branches, they usually regard it much the same way we would a hammock, lol. If you need more humidity for a corn snake, they use & love a "humid-hide" with damp sphagnum moss.

Most snakes do not appreciate bright lights...too much will stress them. BTW, I actually have used a couple of professionally made plastic cages in the past. (HDPE plastic -Prolines from Constrictors Northwest) One issue with plastic cages is that prolonged use of UTH will warp the bottoms just a bit. But mostly I didn't care for the poor air circulation & lack of visibility. I realize that for humidity & heat, most boa & python keepers prefer plastic cages, but there's more than one way to do things, especially for different species.