Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My newly acquired adult jani are driving me nuts in terms of cage maintenance.
I have all of my animals in sweater box racks with plastic dog-dish waterbowls and shredded aspen. This has worked great with smaller colubrids. The jani, though, were constantly spilling the water and getting shavings in the water. So I tried heavier ceramic bowls - that solved the spilling problem, but not the shavings in the water. So I switched to sheets of newspaper. That stays out of the waterbowls, but in moving around, they get it all pushed into one side of the cage, and then the feces go directly onto the floor of the cage. (Oddly enough, some of them seem to keep the paper perfectly neat all the time, while the others always push it around on day 1.) I have them in a CB-110 rack, so they have about as much floor space as a rack system allows.
Anybody have any suggestions for this, or is it just part of the joy of Pits?
-Lee McMurtry

It's part of the joy of keeping Pits!!!!! Unless you can train 'em to use the toilet you're gonna be up to your armpits in poop!!! But hey, they are worth the extra maintenance!!! The poop and smell were part of my spouse's demanding I get rid of the Pits or all the snakes. So instead of 50 Pits I have a pair of Hypo Stillwaters. Don't tell her but I'm planning on sneaking in a couple of N. Pines next season!!!!! Came close this past August!!!!

Pat

I can not believe that My old friend Pat has almost totally gotten out of Pits......It is a sad day indeed.

I think that my wife knows better than to even suggest such a horrid thing!

Give me a buzz when you begin the long process of building the pit collection back up..........
JG

Yeah- I agree... that's a damn shame.

Next on my list for pits are some of those amazing hypo stillwaters. I have yet to see any pics of them that truly capture how amazingly beautiful they are!

//Todd

I recently got my first pair of pits. I am now fully aware of "the smell" you speak of. I think they will be worth it though.
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SShane@
SSuperiorSSerpents
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h127/SSuperiorSSerpents/

Absolutely- there's nothing quite like the stink from a pit, that's for sure.

When I walk into my office, I know without question when one of my pines has dropped a deuce. (among all the pythons and kings)

However, the shredded aspen is a NOSE-SAVER!

I don't know how you guys do it with newspaper and pits!!! The aspen does a such a good job absorbing the majority of that stink.

As a matter of fact, without it, my wife would absolutely BAN all my snakes from the stink alone!

//Todd

Really Todd? Yeah, the newspaper did the exact opposite for me, which was contain the smell much better than when I used aspen.

Killer snake bro!
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Genesis 1:1

I am in the same boat. I only have 2 pits, in the same room as 34 other snakes, and can surely tell when it was either of them who "went". My wife came into the snake room last night, and told me I should invest in some Lysol.
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SShane@
SSuperiorSSerpents
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h127/SSuperiorSSerpents/

around your snakes. I watched a buddy of mine kill his boa with it when we were in jr high school! It affects thier livers in a bad way.

How do you keep the aspen out of the waterbowl?
-Lee

In the case of the particular snakes that do the pushing of the newspaper aside, I would just use extra layers of newspaper for those snakes. I went thru the same thing and found out that worked really well!

Billy

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Genesis 1:1

Please give me that snake. Pretty please. lol RW

Sure, let's trade! Buy me some wings and fries from Wingstop and it is a deal!!! LOL!!!
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Genesis 1:1

I now use this as a subrate for the vivs/boxes of my larger pits and they seem to enjoy digging around in it I also use this in all my vivs/boxes during hibernation.

http://www.pet-supermarket.co.uk/erol.html?gclid=CKeH1uevmI8CFQkvlAodFkKVVw#1154X33100

hope this helps...........AL

Lee, Here's what I do for aspen shovers...and she never dumps the bowl...it just kind of rotates around inside the other one.

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Dale....dgoins222@yahoo.com
www.LibertyReptiles.com

I've thought about something like that - I'll give it a try. Thanks! Nice Cape...