What's the best substrate?

[Charles8088]

What is best really depends on your climate and tastes. I have really been a fan of CocoBlox by Freedom Breeder, but I buy it in super-bulk so it's not as expensive for me as it would be for someone with only an animal or two (5 full bricks is basically me doing a full change on all my snakes at once). The sizes of the chunks seems to work better for me than other products I've tried made from coco, and it seems to release moisture at just the right rate for my climate, where smaller chunks release it a bit faster and I get peaks and troughs of humidity. I'd say try a small amount of ReptiChip or similar once even if it's more expensive and see how it performs for you. If it sucks in your climate, it's not really "cheaper" if you aren't going to use it all. If you live somewhere pretty dry, ReptiChip is probably spot on. If you live somewhere already pretty humid, I'd go with something more synthetic or aspen chips unless you dislike the aesthetics of it. I'm right in the middle, where in the absence of heating elements the humidity is perfect for BPs, but the heating elements dry it out enough that I need that little extra boost.

I've used CocoBlox... great stuff. The last batch I also bought in bulk... I only have 4 snakes, but just store the stuff in the shed, no biggie.

With that said, I find it to be pretty much the same as ReptiChip, so I always go with which I can find for cheapest.

Nikkibus, how do you compare CocoBlox with ReptiChip? You use more of it, so maybe you notice a difference. For me they seem the same.