Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I got a albino burmese about 3ft long, I like decorating th tank to make it look as natural as possible, i used to have ESU's Lizard litter but I found some in my Boa's mouth and i didn't wanna have the same problem with the burm, now have Zoo Med carpeting, but it dont look nice. What can I use for it that is safe yet nice looking to bring out the colors? PS I HATE NEWSPAPER !!!!!!!!

You may hate newspaper but all I will say is that it is the BEST substrate for your burm. So, if you have your snake's best interest in mind, newspaper is best.

But, since you are looking for something more "natural" looking, there are some options; all of which have their positives and negatives (the biggest concern with these is the possibility for ingestion which is something you will spend a great deal of energy in preventing). Substrates such as cypress mulch, cypress bark chips (some of the big hardware stores sell these really big "chips" of bark which look nice and are difficult to ingest because they are the size of a small softball), aspen bedding (not really natural looking but I have found that it works pretty well and looks okay), river rock gravel/pea gravel (once again, every time the snake defecates, you will need to empty a good deal of gravel out to disinfect and rinse it...it is heavy and not much fun to work with), sandy/soil substrate (actually, not a bad idea as it can be fairly easily scooped and raked to allow the natural microbes in the soil to break down the urates). There are undoubtedly outher good options but just thought I would share these as they may work for your purposes.

Rob Carmichael, Director/Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center
City of Lake Forest Parks & Recreation (IL)

I think one of the coolest looking setups is a desert look with sand and a sunkin water dish. Maybe add a little fake palm tree or something like that. BUT, it probably want be fun to clean, so I just stick with indoor/outdoor carpet you can get at home depot. Cut a couple pieces so when one gets dirty, you have another one to replace it with while you wash the other one. To make it look more natural, just add rocks or something to your cage. I have a 3 foot cage and i have a little tree decoration that i got from petsmart along with 2 water dishes and a cave to hide in and a few rocks. You can make it look nice without some exotic substrate. 2 years from now, you will have a 10ft. burmese popping out some big turds, so you should think "simple". If you don't think simple, you might be less likely to clean the cage when it gets bigger. If that is the case, you have a possibility of bacteria infections. I know you don't want that. Besides, burms don't care about substrate, they only care about their next meal.