Reptile & Amphibian Forums

or "Hints from Heloise" for the older crowd.....

My enclosure cleaning technique has evolved over the years and I wanted to share my latest method. I used to drag all my rubbermaids (both rodent and snake enclosures) out into the yard, fill them with a bleach/water mix, let them stand for a day then empty and rinse. The bleach filled gray water would go into the landscape. I noticed that I was using alot of bleach and overloading some areas with too much "salt" aka bleach.

I realized that I could soak everything with straight water for a few hours, rinse off any bedding or fecal debris, and then spray the tubs down with a 50/50 bleach water mix from a hand held inexpensive spray bottle. I let them sit for a while and then rinse. I am using a fraction of the bleach I once used so the cost is lower and I am not damaging the soil in the landscape.

I can only speculate as to the effectiveness of this method but it seems like a 50/50 bleach coating would be a fairly hostile environment and sitting in the sun for a few hours can't be fun for a fungus, bacteria, or other microbe either!

Obviously not practical for everyone's situation but I wanted to share this tip anyway.

Happy Sunday afternoon cage cleaning to you all!

JG

When I used tubs I had a large horse trough that I would fill with bleach water mix and soak them all inside of it. Then after several hours I would just pull them out and spray with water. A big help is having extra tubs to swap snakes right away. And I noticed letting bleach water sit in the sun creates crystal build up in the side walls so from going to a soak to straight wash eliminated it.

Clay

I used to use bleach water but have switched to Virosan. It seems to work well. I purchased an old dishwasher in which I wash my water bowls in. I use dishwash soap as well as Virosan in it. It works pretty well and man does it cut down on time! It would be great to have an extra tub for every snake but I think that my wife might shoot me if I were to spend extra money on more tubs. As it is she won't let me go anywhere near the plastics department in any store we may go to! Sunday has been great here. Cleaned my fair share of snake poop and did some feeding. Should have Black Pine eggs in the next day or so as well as another clutch of bulls. In the mean time relaxing with the kids sounds like a fantastic plan. Hope everyone had a great weekend and that it continues into the week for you! Take care.

Jeremy
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Jeremy Pierce
Shade Tree Exotics
shade-tree-exotics@att.net

Funny how wifes/girlfriends do that... but as impulsive as I am about buying things gotta respect her for keeping me straight. I have a hard time seeing the reason not to buy stuff when it comes to snakes, or things related.

After all, she gave up one room for my reptiles about 3 months ago, and now she just gave up another for my rats. I'm looking into inline fans and ducting now for good ventilation. I have a shop and a 2 car garage with pretty much nothing in them. It's just a convenience thing.

Clay

A 10% bleach solution is usually recommended for cleaning/disinfecting cages. Something about stronger solutions being less effective (I would have to look up the reasons for this as my brain is malfunctioning right now). I used to use the "if my nose isn't burning then it can't be working" method for years until I started reading vet med texts.

I've always done the smell test too... Now that I think about it I can imagine how it may not be all the effective...

Brad Tillman ads a micro-amount of bleach to all of the water he gives to his snakes to kill bacteria in the water (this was 10 years ago). And holy crap are his snakes amazing!

Among other things... I don't see how bacteria could survive a heavier concentration of bleach to water. I can however see that it may effect other things... If you see it again post it up, I'm curious.

Clay

A reptile vet told me to use 4oz. bleach to one gallon water for cleaning.

Thats half of a cup or 1:32 (bleach to water ratio)... that's a lot IMO... I'd probably do a cap full to one gallon...

Clay