Posted by:
J_Kutz
at Fri Jan 21 23:06:32 2005 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by J_Kutz ]
The last house I owned I kept a yellow anaconda (9 ft at the time) in a large "built in" enclosure. It was 6x10 feet or so and went from floor to ceiling.
In it I had poured a concrete pond over a false floor and installed radiant heating, as well as a filtration system and a bit of a waterfall (helped to keep the humidity up). Used sprinkler heads attached to a manifold and plumbed into the house water supply for a mist/rain system attached to the ceiling and drainage. Other decorations were molded out of concrete in order to make them easy to maintain (rock ledges for basking, tree stumps for visual appeal). Few live plants just to break things up a bit (tropical lilly pads in the pool and some bamboo that just wouldn't die growing on the edges of the enclosure).
Took a few hundred dollars for the supplies - minus the lexan for the front windows...that cost almost as much as the rest of the enclosure. However it also took many, many, many hours to design, build, fix, test, fix again and finally introduce the fast growing hatchling too (it was a bit under 3 feet when I started and a bit over 5 feet when I finished). I really liked the end result, end it made maintenance pretty easy too.
Most the time I will set up at least one or two naturalistic display cases for my snakes along with somewhat more sterile conditions for my breeders. The ones in the display cases are a bit more active, but both groups always seem to be at the same level of health (eat the same, breed the same, shed the same). They tend to respond more to other factors besides what the cage looks like.
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