Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've used newspaper and Indoor/outdoor carpet in the past but am considering switching to aspen chips for aesthetic and possibly maintenance considerations. Also, I believe chips would be better in that my Foxs' love to burrow.
Question for those who use chips: Do your rats generally eliminate feces on top of or below the chips or both? What depth of chips do you recommend? I use 15 and 20 gal. aquariums for the housing.

Thanks for any help,
Vulpy

1.2 Elaphe vulpina

>>I've used newspaper and Indoor/outdoor carpet in the past but am considering switching to aspen chips for aesthetic and possibly maintenance considerations. Also, I believe chips would be better in that my Foxs' love to burrow.
>>Question for those who use chips: Do your rats generally eliminate feces on top of or below the chips or both? What depth of chips do you recommend? I use 15 and 20 gal. aquariums for the housing.
>>
>>Thanks for any help,
>>Vulpy
>>
>>1.2 Elaphe vulpina

I use aspen chips along with a variety of other things. I usually use 2 inches, or less, of chips, and put a number of plastic containers in the cage...a large hide, water jug, other hides, and possibly a food jug. You can put the chips around the containers, or just place the containers on top of the chips. I also stuff newspaper and paper towels into the hides, etc. Your foxes will probably use the hides more often than burrow in this setup. Here's a ten gallon tank showing a large water jug and smaller jug which is used as a food jug, or sometimes as a hide, or another water jug. The water jugs add humidity to the tank....

Of course, I'm interested in functional before aesthetic. Your foxes will spend time in the hides, may soak in the water, and can be trained to eat out of a food jug. They may poop anywhere including in the hides, but usually they do it on top of the aspen, or in the water jug. I sometimes keep two water jugs in a cage, to increase humidity, and also because some snakes will consistently poop in their water. But that's ok, it's easy to clean. Also, you can remove the props and snake, empty the whole tank, wash it (the value of glass), and easily start over. Aspen is pretty cheap.

Eastern and Western fox snakes are hard to tell apart, especially since there's a great deal of variation with each. Both can be dark or light individuals. Western fox snakes have more variation over their range than any of them do with the Eastern and its restricted range. This is one reason I opposed the taxonomic split to two species. I still think it should be one species..two subspecies. You can try to tell the difference by counting blotches. Eastern fox snakes supposedly have fewer blotches.

I've kept a few of each form for short times, but mostly I have experience with them in the field. My maintenance experience is mostly with other ratsnakes. Here's a Western, in situ, on railroad tracks in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan...

Good luck with them...

TC

-----
Ratsnake Haven: Calico and hypo Chinese beauty snakes, Mandarin ratsnakes, Chinese twin-spotted ratsnakes, South Korean Dione's ratsnake, Great Plains ratsnakes and corns

Thanks Terry. Great photo of the Western Fox. Appreciate the setup ideas also. Not sure about counting blotches. From what I'm reading, I agree that it doesn't seem as though there should be two seperate species of Fox Snake.
-----
FoxfanTim