Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey Everyone,
I am new to this forum and I am excited to be getting my first snake in a few weeks I have wanted a pet snake since I was a kid but my mother would never go for it at the time and neither would any of my roommates or partners until now. I did a lot of reading and googling about different types of snakes as pets and finally decided on a leucistic black ratsnake. I just got the tank set up this week and wanted to get some feedback on it and on pet ratsnakes in general. Thanks, Beka

This is what I have so far:
-20L Zilla Critter cage
-Cocosoft substrate
-Habba-Hut
-Exo Terra cave
-Grapewood climb w/ Repta-vine
-Zoo Med 10-20gal UT heater
-Exo Terra 75watt heat glo infared bulb
-Fluker's 5.5" ceramic top Dome lamp with dimmer
-2 thermometer strips for inside hides
-Zoo Med Repti Rock water bowl

Beka, sounds like a great setup for a juvenile to subadult black ratsnake. I would ditch the infrared bulb since you are using a UTH. You want the warm side to be 85 degrees or so, and using both the uth and infrared bulb may create too hot of a warm side. You can always replace the infrared bulb with a non heat producing fluorescent bulb to light the cage during the day and make it more attractive without adding extra heat. An adult black rat can exceed five feet, so it may outgrow that set up in a few years. However, a snake up to three to four feet long should be fine in that setup.

KevinM

A twenty gallon tank will only be good for a year, maybe two, depending on how fast the rat snake grows. I have a Texas black rat snake, also leucistic and he's over 5'. He wouldn't fit in a 20 gallon tank comfortably at all.

I would toss out those strip thermometers too..they are not accurate at all. Pick up some digital thermometers with probes and a temp gun. These are much better at measuring ambient (air) temp and surface temperatures.

The infrared light is also useless...as mentioned before. A simple florescent tub light can be used to provide viewing light if you need though they do fine with just ambient light from the room. The UT heater is really all you need to provide the cage with good ambient temps and a hot spot...unless the room gets very cold. If you find you are losing alot of heat, cover the screen top except one small area for ventilation.

You also want to make sure there are no cracks or spaces a baby snake can squeeze out and the lid is secure so it can't be pushed out. Snakes are good at climbing up the side of cages at the corners, they can even wedge themselves between the slip of the tank and the cover, especially when young.

I think snakes do better in one piece cages like shoe and sweater boxes or PVC or mold produced cages than glass tanks. You can find nice clear plastic containers for cheap and its really easy to convert them into attractive cages and they are much easier to keep clean. With a few small holes drilled in the sides or just the plastic lid they hold heat and humidity well and keep snakes in. Just have to make sure the container you buy has a snug tight fitting lid. Some can be pushed up easily on the long sides...though they clamp down tightly at the ends or one long side. Metal clamp style paper clips work great on holding those ends secure too.
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PHLdyPayne

Thank both of you for the tips. PHLdyPayne, if I were to get a clear shoe/sweater box for a hatchling/juvenile, which brand/model/size would you reccomend? Also, how would I heat it? I heard you cant use UT heaters on plastic because it can over heat it and be dangerous. Is that true? Could warming up plastic over time also leech out any bad chemicals that the snake could absorb? Another question I have is, do natural beddings carry mites? Someone had posted something out that on another forum about their BP's getting mites once in a while and they believed the bedding was causing it, switched and had no more problems. They didn't say which bedding though. I have cocosoft right now because I just think paper towels and green felt seem so dull plus I am worried that they would layer too thin and my little girl would get burns. Thanks again, I welcome all the advice I can get as I am quite a newbie at this point