You would do well using ever so slightly dampened coir fiber (like Bed-a-Beast) with ruthveni. You can mix in a little sand and reptile bark if desired, say 1/5 by volume to give it body.



Sand alone is not for ruthveni. Especially loose sand in a tank.



If you go deep, then you can mount the heater on the side of the tank. Otherwise, use less substrate. With the heater on the bottom and substrate thick, you just insulate the heater as Doug said. You want to conduct heat.



Below old pic shows side-mounted heater, substrate about 1 1/2 inches thick and a pile of rocks covered with tiles. The snake sits between the rocks and heater when it basks, and disappears into the substrate when it doesn't. That substrate is this pic is wood chips. Later I added coir fiber to boost humidity and increased the depth overall to about 3 inches. After that the snake could burrow under the substrate against the side to warm up. The tile and rocks was not really necessary then.



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Mark

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