I prefer newspapers for substrate. It just seems real easy to clean. I clean mine when a nice plop is on there. Just pick the paper up and trash it. Replace with new paper. With loose substrates like sand and pine/aspen chips some of the of the substrate will stick to the bottom of the tank where moisture from its...feces/urates made it stick. With papers applied thick (three to five pages thick) no poo makes contact with the tank bottom. Makes clean up easier.



Bark is okay, but is expensive and graybands don't live in that stuff anyway. It would look strange for me to see a grayband in a tank with bark shavings in it.



Aspen and Pine can kill some odor that snakes can produce.



Sand is most natural, but does not serve in killing odor. It almost harbors stink. It looks cool though.



Graybands are not burrowers. Sure they live in rock cracks, but they do not dig into the ground. So I think loose substrates serve no purpose for them.



Papers are the best. My opinion only and there are plenty out there that agree and disagree with me.



Shrek is right...the rock idea with a hide box is the way to go. Your snake will love you for it. I recently had to take over caring for my professor's graybands at school. None had hides. Since they got hides I notice their demeanor is better. They like you and I like to feel secure and safe hiding somewhere.



Okay I'm shutting up now.
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14 Leopard Gackos 5.9.0

1 Baby Leo (Joi) 0.1.0 temp sexed

2 Tokay Geckos 2.0.0

1 Graybanded Kingsnake 1.0.0 (on vacation in my house)

1 Baird's Rat Snake (Thanks Vadoni!) 1.0.0

RIP Trachemys scripta elegans 0.0.1

coming soon...

1 Trans Pecos Rat Snake 0.0.1 (if I can fix his eye problem)

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