Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was just wondering how often you should be cleaning the cages from top to bottom, removing everything and giving it a thorough wipe? Also how long should you leave the subtrate (I use reptile bark) in the tank before getting new stuff? Thanks in advance for the replies.

As long as you spot clean often and well, remove uneaten food promptly, and change out the water dish regularly you really only need to do a top to bottom cleaning a few times a year. When my snakes shed I'll pull out their decorations and clean them to remove the shed pieces on them and pick up all the shed out of the cage. Other than that I spot clean any time I notice something in the cage and change the water dishes daily. If you have a mite problem top to bottome cleaning needs to be done much more often until the problem is definitely gone. Good luck.
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3.6 ball pythons
1.2 king snakes (1 chocolate, 2 albino)
1.0 columbian red tail boa
1.1 pueblan milksnakes
2.2 african house snakes
2.2 striped albino applegate gophers
1.0 watersnake
1.2 burmese pythons (1 albino, 2 hets)
2.1 pygmy rattlesnakes
1.1 dumeril's boas
3.3 corns (miami, okatee, snow, caramel, 2 creamsicle)
1.1 jungle corns

I think it mostly comes down to personal preferences more so than a set standard. When I used aspen shavings for my snakes (when my collection was MUCH smaller), I did a complete cleaning once per month with spot cleaning in between. Now I use cotton sheets for large cages, pillowcases or custom-made (by me) cloth 'sheets' for the smaller cages, or paper towels for my two tiny guys (hatchling creamsicle and juvenile Solomon Island ground boa). With this setup, doing a thorough cleaning every time is easy - including washing all cage furniture and wiping the cage itself down with a mild bleach solution. Solids are shaken into the trash or commode and the sheets are dropped into the washer with hot water, bleach & detergent, then new sheets are put in. I like the reusable factor with the cotton sheets, they look better than newspaper, and make cleanup far easier & quicker than anything else I've ever used. Plus, in my book, it's helping the environment...newspaper or wood chips are non-reusable where the cotton sheets are, thus saving on wood products.

Raven