Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I normally clean when i see poop, but i keep them on paper towels.... I wanted to switch over to aspen. How often would you clean on aspen.. I ask because it is higer priced and its not as easy as the paper towel. Is it ok to clean once a week even though they poop in it. I figured it would be fine since it will still be cleaner that the wild.

p.s. all mine are cbb... not wc

well,
with aspen you can just pick up the part that has waste and just fluff it around to refreshen it. You certainly don't have to do complete changes as much as you would with newspaper or paper towel,plus aspen absorbs odor much better than paper towel. That being said, newspaper or paper towel is cheap and easy, although I sometimes worry because they can't really burrow in paper towel like they can in aspen. I usually find myself switching back and forth between them.

I'm using aspen, and I worry that a snake may ingest some when eating. Then I think that if a snake's stomach acid can digest bones, it might be able to handle a small piece of aspen too. What do people think -- do all snakes need to be removed from substrate before eating? Thanks!

Calcium and cellulose require different enzymes. Snakes can not digest any pant material whatsoever. Certainly not aspen shavings. Now usually if they swallow a litle it will pass through and they'll be okay. But complications do happen. So feeding on it, especially for sloppy eaters like hognoses, is not suggested.
Wet mice are even worse than dry mice, because of the amount that sticks to them. And f/t mice tend to be wet.
You can usually use some kind of placemat though, if you want to just put food in there and move on. A plastic margerine lid or something flat like that works fine for most of them, unless your snake is a dragger. Most are too busy eating to want to bring the mouse to another part of the cage though.
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0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bull (Winkle)