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When I finish my turtle pond this spring (I hope) I'll have a very large tank with lid...5X30"X2. I'd like to convert it into a display of some sort, cause it's in my living room--think of it is a big screen tv turned permanently to animal planet There's a few things i'm looking at, and one of them is making it a display/naturalist type tank for one of my florida kings. Anyone here got any experience making naturalist/display tanks for kings and any pointers on it?

The other things I'm thinking of are day geckos, whiptails, or a paladrium set up with neroida and maybe a mud turtle or two (not sure).
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
6.6 African House snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
.1 corn snake
4.2 Florida Kings
1.2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
0.0.1 Argentine boa

Well, kind of an irony, because kingsnakes love to hide, and the more truly "naturalistic" the cage is, the more hide opportunity you will be providing. Being that kings spend by far most of their lives underground, your naturalistic cage will allow them to go underground. And they will.

Of course when they are hungry or for other reasons (mating season) the kingsnake may be out and about, but otherwise, it will be out of site.

I would avoid the decorated "naturalistic" and go with meeting the snake's needs while still allowing you ease of maintenance. If you want soil, coir fiber is great for that. Sink some PVC pipes in it. Youmg kings love it. As they age and get larger, they sometimes are not afraid to be seen more.

I think a substrate of Sani Chip, Sani-Chip mix (I mix it with Desert Snow and whatever softwood bedding I find at big pet stores) or aspen and then a plastic shoebox/bootbox (hole cut on side, a big rectangle cutout in lid) filled with damp sphagnum moss is probably the easiest setup that meets the snake's needs well. Depending on how you place the heater and tub of moss, this setup affords warm and humid, cooler and slightly less humid, warm and dry, and cool and dry all in the same cage.
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Mark

The soil I'd use i'd planned on being the same as I used for varanids when I kept them. A mix of topsoil, sand, and sometimes peat or something similar. Great at holding burrows, humidity, etc. Wonderful stuff but too heavy to use in racks. I'm OK with not seeing whichever one I put in it very often, but then, I use racks for most of my snakes too *shrug*. A big rat snake would be another option; I could probably use some styrofoam and epoxy to make good tree branches suitable for like a yellow rat or something, and do a soil/leaf litter to replicate the forest floor...*shrugs*

I may still go with geckos, I don't know. I think an 80-100 gallon tank set with some sort of geckos might be really neat; put coir fiber on the walls and plant air plants in it, use my soil mix, plant some small shrubs and grasses...I dunno, so many choices.
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
6.6 African House snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
.1 corn snake
4.2 Florida Kings
1.2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
0.0.1 Argentine boa

" A big Rat snake would be another option"

I kept several large 6' Leucistic Black Rats in 6' Neodeshas for a lot of years and they were almost ALWAYS out draped on branches. They displayed very well if you decide to do Rats instead of Kings.

I think Mark makes a good point. While the Kings are beautiful, most like to hide a lot (not all). It's a dilema and frustrating. Also when you do the large/naturalistic sort of enclosure the animals (mostly in my experience - others may be different) tend to be very tense when you interact with them and be more likely to rattle,musk,bite and thrash....

Still may be a cool project.

Good luck with whatever you do.

Also when you do the large/naturalistic sort of enclosure the animals (mostly in my experience - others may be different) tend to be very tense when you interact with them and be more likely to rattle,musk,bite and thrash....

Great point!
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