You don't need the top soil. Play sand is fine, but could use some silt. If your going to thicken up the sand, I would recommend that coco stuff that comes in bricks. 75% sand to 25% coco stuff.

These are pics of wild hognose burrows. As you can see the sandy ground has no organics. In the field, the hogs make a point of living only where the substrate(ground/earth) is non organic.
While we keepers can debate this and that all we want. When left to their own accord, the snakes must have reason for the choices they make.

Whats fun is to test different mixes and substrate types, and see what works best for you and your hognose. Testing both substrate type and depth is interesting and fun. Best wishes

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