How to add safe live plants to ball python enclosure

[Starscream]

I'm definitely not saying go bioactive if you want live plants -- only if you want them planted in the substrate and not in pots. Leaving them in pots works perfectly fine -- and like Caitlin said, you can do things to make them look nice for you and functional for the animal.

I think one thing people misunderstand with bioactive for heavy-bodied snakes, is the mistaken assumption that the bioactive aspect is to remove cleaning up any "messes" the snakes make. My girl Maze's messes are way too large and infrequent to actually feed the clean up crew sufficiently, and I would not recommend bioactive if your only aim is to reduce the need to pick up poops. You will for a ball python regardless of if the enclosure is dubbed "bioactive" or not. I provide it more for the opportunity for her to engage in more natural behaviors -- the deep substrate the plants need to thrive also doubles as good digging material for Maze, and she has dug a few holes since I've put her in her big house, as an example.

As for a few more plant choices, I've used pothos, snake plants, pink earth star cryptanthus, aglaonemas, dwarf umbrella plants, spiderworts, spider plants, english ivy, creeping fig, prayer plants, coleus, dumb cane, rabbit foot's fern, and dracaena. I would NOT recommend begonias or nerve plants -- they are way too fragile, and in the case of nerve plants, require constantly high humidity and watering to really thrive.