Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I wanted my enclosure to look "rainforest" as much as possible. Ive seen people use bark, coco moss, and like stuff. I always thought that stuff would be a likely place for mold/fungus to grow, especially with high humidity. I really dont know what gave me that impression but im i totaly wrong about that?

I've used the repti-bark stuff and kept humidity high and it worked well. I have personally found that aspen seems to mold very fast if there is too much humidity, a spilled water bowl, etc. Cypress mulch seems to work well in a humid environment.

I've never really had much of an issue with any substrates. I use aspen for colubrids and cypress on my boa just cause I keep the humidity higher. Cypress has a nice dark, rainforest type of look and is cheap.

The rain forest has a lot of humidity, but also a lot of ventilation and air flow. Where there is not much air flow you will see moss and plants growing right on top of humid tree branches (epiphytes) something you don’t want to recreate in your cage. Outdoors your snake will thermoregulate and spend some hours basking in the sun and moving from the tree tops to the lower humid areas. Even water snakes do not spend their lives wallowing in dampness. You can create the “look” but not duplicate the actual environment. Ventilation is good in preventing excess humidity, mold, all that.

I think pictures like this one show that high humidity inspires growth of all things good and bad. Cool look, but you don’t want this actually going on in your cage.

My advice is to paint a picture on the walls if you want looks, or use the vinyl sheeting they use for signs and laminate a rainforest background to the wood walls/back. You want a washable cage as much as possible.

I've seen a sign shop do a background mounted on thin plastic and covered with vinyl. I imagine it must have cost a bit of money. But, it was easy to cut it to fit and it could be washed and holdup to humidity. I saw a few cages done like that, and they were awesome and functional.
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Mark