Reptile & Amphibian Forums

As long as there are no bugs in it or furtilizers?

Have any of you used it, what are the pros and cons?

Thanks

Mrbfrog
-----
0.0.1 Common Columbian Boa (Damian)
0.0.1 Amel Cornsnake (Kernal)
0.0.1 Okeetee Cornsnake (Guido)
1.1.0 Lhasa Apso's (Monkey, Tiffany)
1.0.0 Rat Terrier (Ricky)
1.3.0 Mice (nameless)
0.0.4 Goldfish (nameless)
0.1.0 Beta Fish (nameless)
0.0.1 Snail (Gary)"Meoow"

Also Canibal the Musical is just about the the most funny movie ever!!!

Kinda depends on the snake. I've got a high humidity snake on cypress mulch and potting soil and it seems to work great. I guess a downside would be that the snake would be covered in dirt if you wanted to hold it.
-----
Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

I was wondering because in all the discussions about substrates that I have seen I have not really seen anything about regular soil. I am using aspen shavings with my boa right now and I just put some potting soil in my two corn snake cages. I have noticed that I have had to work more to clean the aspen off my boa than the dirt off of my corns. This could be due to the huge size difference between the snakes. The Corns area a few weeks old and the boa is over 3 feet.

I have used cypress mulch in the past and I think that I like it better than the aspen, I really don’t like how I have to brush my snake off every time I take it out. And I don’t like how the aspen smells. It is not a strong smell but when I am holding the snake I notice it, and I am sure it is the aspen and not the snake.

meretseger you said that you use potting soil and cypress mulch for one of your snakes, I think I would like the way that looks and with the cypress mulch it might be a bit easier to spot poop than it would with soil that looks about the same color.

What about mixing Sphagnum moss in with the soil, isn’t that stuff suppose to be sterile, would it help keep down any bacteria that could grow in a moist corner???

Thanks

MrBfrog
-----
0.0.1 Common Columbian Boa (Damian)
0.0.1 Amel Cornsnake (Kernal)
0.0.1 Okeetee Cornsnake (Guido)
1.1.0 Lhasa Apso's (Monkey, Tiffany)
1.0.0 Rat Terrier (Ricky)
1.3.0 Mice (nameless)
0.0.4 Goldfish (nameless)
0.1.0 Beta Fish (nameless)
0.0.1 Snail (Gary)"Meoow"

Also Canibal the Musical is just about the the most funny movie ever!!!

I'm a big fan of peat moss, great for humidity... spaghum would probably be pretty cool too. I use plain cypress with a number of my snakes. I've got some geckos on potting soil/peatmoss too. It's a perfecly viable substrate, just has a few downsides like every substrate, so it's what works for you and your animal. I use aspen too. Just depends.
-----
Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

But the primary issue, of course, is trying to maintain a reasonably sanitary environment in such a small area as a cage. I'm partial to substrates that make a good clean up easy for me. So I use plain paper whenever possible.

One other thought re dirt: a water bowl tip-over ==> MUD

I use the compressed coconut fiber for my rubber boa and it works great!