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Has anyone out there tried setting up a naturalistic vivarium following the suggestions and guidelines as described in "The Art of Keeping Snakes" by Phillipe de Vosjoli? Last year I bought a 1-month-old female Honduran king and once she was adjusted and eating steadily, I followed the author's plan and put together a setup with active soil, a drainage layer and a layer for worms. It has live plants, petrified wood, volcanic rock and an interesting rock found in a mountain steam in Juneau, Alaska. The snake built a network of tunnels which lead to a little underground cavern. Being crepuscular she emerges at dawn and dusk. Her skin is glossy and she sheds beautifully. The author states that healthy soil with a good aerobic bacteria count will keep the snake from contracting blister disease. Of all my snakes, I would say she has developed the most natural of habits. It's working so well that I would like to have all my snakes set up in natural vivaria. Here and there I ask people I meet and I've yet to find one who has tried this, but I understand that it is quite common practice in Europe to construct these mini natural environments. Any thougts or ideas?

we build snake vivariums a lot. you don't want anerobic bacteria, you want hetatrophic bacteria. "A" will not compete with pathenogenic bacteria; saleminella (sp) where "H" will.

blisters is the least of your concerns. too much himidty is the soil means you didn't build it right: false bottom is the only way you should approach any of these types of vivariums for larger herps; water dragons, boas, chondros etc. your soil mix should drain and pack well but still offer the plants like philo and alocasia to grow well. build any burows above the soils moisuter line.

you largest concern should be finding the waste and if you don't establish the nitrogen cycle properly, with "H" bacteria and NOT "A" then mold, pathenogenic bacteria and on are going to create RT infections...that book is not right at all.

Contact me by phone or email but in reality don't belive all that book says.

Thanks,

Deven Nicholson
Terra5Designs.com | 925-465-1295
Walnut Creek California
Ensuring Animal Husbandry through Education and Habitat Design.

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>>we build snake vivariums a lot. you don't want anerobic bacteria, you want hetatrophic bacteria. "A" will not compete with pathenogenic bacteria; saleminella (sp) where "H" will.

DeVosjoli DOES mention that you don't want a waterlogged substrate because you will get an overgrowth of anaerobic bacteria. Even in a well-balanced soil, if you have a salmonella positive animal actively shedding the pathenogenic bacteria in it's feces, regardless of your cleaning regimen the animal will still be able to reinfect itself.

>>
>>blisters is the least of your concerns. too much himidty is the soil means you didn't build it right: false bottom is the only way you should approach any of these types of vivariums for larger herps; water dragons, boas, chondros etc. your soil mix should drain and pack well but still offer the plants like philo and alocasia to grow well. build any burows above the soils moisuter line.

Blister disease should be one of his main concerns because it is far more dangerous than an imbalance in his soil bacteria. It sounds like he has a viable soil mix that is well-drained and offers his animal the ability to make burrows. Furthermore, many animals dig or use burrows well down into the more moisture-laden levels of the soil. The chief use of a burrow is for shelter and more often than not a place of refuge with a higher humidity level than found above ground. Gopher Tortoises are a great example of burrowers and the Indigo and Diamondback Rattlesnakes that share those burrows because of their more moderate temperatures and higher humidity levels. Also, whether Philodendron or Alocasia can grow in a soil mix is not the be-all end-all of judging whether you've got the mix right. In my experience both of those plants would grow on a cinder block if you watered them enough.

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>>you largest concern should be finding the waste and if you don't establish the nitrogen cycle properly, with "H" bacteria and NOT "A" then mold, pathenogenic bacteria and on are going to create RT infections...that book is not right at all.

I don't know if you've read DeVosjoli's book or not, but he clearly mentions the need to regularly remove the bulk of animal wastes and then stir the soil so that microbes deeper in the substrate can begin breaking down the remaining waste products. He also mentions that lack of attention to these details WILL result in growth of undesirable bacteria.

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>>Contact me by phone or email but in reality don't belive all that book says.

I think DeVosjoli's book is fine as written. It's a basic book covering many aspects of naturalistic vivarium design and his concepts regarding bioactive substrates are all sound ones that have been in use by the terrarium folks for last 100 years or more.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

get off your high horse matt. blister won't occur if you habitat is built right, not by a wet eared zookeep from texas with a napolean complex but rather buy someone that knows what the animal needs...zoos kill me. i've seen zoos cramp so many animals in cages just to show herps and they can't even get a plant to grow. it's sad. seeing a taiwan beauty snake on concrete
and being offered water in a bowl...

anyway, i found that the larger concern is for moled poo and it's risk not only to the pet own, the vivarium but more importnatly to the health of the animal and the owners kids. salamenila is worse in bad enclosures then you'd think. i'm not say at all the DeV. is wrong but i'm saying that blisters is in conern with too wet a substrate and that's easily fixed. having too much pathenogenic bacteria in the vivarium is invisable and by far more dangerous.

we have a pastel and one spider ball in a natural habitat. tall grasses and real dirt. burrows etc but maintaining it is easy with a hetatrophic bacteria mix and virosan. blisters can be fixed by turning up the air flow, and making the right substrate which is more of a construction issues the maintenance...cough cough...IMO!

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>>get off your high horse matt. blister won't occur if you habitat is built right, not by a wet eared zookeep from texas with a napolean complex

For starters, I'm not on my 'high horse' - I was merely trying to point out that DeVosjoli did not give bad advice in his book and that the original poster sounded like he'd done his homework and already had a decently-working natural vivarium. Oh yeah, and I'm not wet behind the ears - if you read my signature line you'll see that I've been keeping herps for OVER 25 years - not exactly wet behind the ears - oh yeah, I don't live in Texas either and I don't have a Napoleon complex. I was merely trying to defend DeVosjoli's book which you seemed to have summarily dismissed as being at least half full of wrong information.

>>but rather buy someone that knows what the animal needs...zoos kill me. i've seen zoos cramp so many animals in cages just to show herps and they can't even get a plant to grow. it's sad. seeing a taiwan beauty snake on concrete
>>and being offered water in a bowl...

That may be the case with some zoos. However, I know of a lot of private hobbyists who take far worse care of animals than zoos. Furthermore, all AZA accredited zoos are overseen by stringent USDA regulations regarding sanitation and health of animals. We also have stringent AZA Taxon Advisory Group guidelines governing how we house species. As for Taiwan Beauty Snakes being housed on concrete - well, I'd like to know what zoo that is since there are only 13 individuals of the Elaphe taeniura ssp. housed in American zoos.

>>
>>anyway, i found that the larger concern is for moled poo and it's risk not only to the pet own, the vivarium but more importnatly to the health of the animal and the owners kids. salamenila is worse in bad enclosures then you'd think. i'm not say at all the DeV. is wrong but i'm saying that blisters is in conern with too wet a substrate and that's easily fixed. having too much pathenogenic bacteria in the vivarium is invisable and by far more dangerous.

I agree that a too-humid environment is bad. Having too-high humidity issues will lead to a bloom of potentially pathenogenic bacteria. In DeVosjoli's book he mentions in particular how water snakes which can be susceptible to blister disease did not develop the disease on the bioactive substrate. The key here is the disease did not develop because the soil conditions were right - moisture below the surface and dry on top. The original poster was merely pointing out that his substrate was hydrated properly and he was not seeing any evidence of blister disease.

>>
>>we have a pastel and one spider ball in a natural habitat. tall grasses and real dirt. burrows etc but maintaining it is easy with a hetatrophic bacteria mix and virosan. blisters can be fixed by turning up the air flow, and making the right substrate which is more of a construction issues the maintenance...cough cough...IMO!

I wholeheartedly agree. Proper enclosure design is everything. However, you seem to have missed my original point which was simply to say that you shouldn't condemn DeVosjoli's book outright as being half full of incorrect information. I'm sorry that you appear to have seen my post as a personal attack or in some way as me getting up on my soapbox. At least I didn't call into account your character or expertise or stoop to calling names. The purpose of these forums is the free exchange of knowledge which I hope we can do in spirit of cooperation and and in the process hopefully learn something from each other.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

glad to see i can't push a button.

many times people build these vivariums; 90 gallon fishtanks,
or custom or rooms sized habitat and there seems to be a common issue that i'm correcting. a book. one book, three books or more! all say one thing. all say nothing about soil profiles,
why uv is important, drainage, micro fauna and such. they all say orchid bark looks like, top soil is fine too but none say anything about what to do about the white mold (it's eating sugar off the wood surface, it's fine), the white strings are the roots of mushroom...yeah yeah, they don't have roots, i know...LOL...they don't say anything about what could be in the Top Soil...like fecal or chicken manure...bat turds...all of these things are bad in an enclosed habitat as there isn't an ozone, the sun and weather. instead in the habitat there will be fungus blooms, bacterial loads that are too high UNLESS the habitat, it's soil profile and the microclimates are regualted. this has to be done at the construction to ensure the right life supports are in place long before the animal is brought home, which is backward to reality many times! also i said the bit about the zoo as working with keepers for the last four years has shown me a narrow mindedness that hold fast to tradition and nothing to advancing the future of herpeticulture...maybe i'm bold but i don't want to defend my knowledge and experience, instead we should try other principal that have worked but with out the "new hobby" financing many of our older peers had, sharing the knowledge is hard...my brashness can be forgiven i'm sure but it's still important to think of all that could occur not just what some book says.

>>glad to see i can't push a button.
>>
>>many times people build these vivariums; 90 gallon fishtanks,
>>or custom or rooms sized habitat and there seems to be a common issue that i'm correcting. a book. one book, three books or more! all say one thing. all say nothing about soil profiles,

Too true. I had a soils and hydrology class in college so I know what you're talking about. Of course many people will read only one book and take that as the gospel according to TFH or whatever [that's a jibe at some of the worst herp schlock books still published]. What's good about these forums and the conversation we're now having is that we're exchanging information and educating other people to read and construct with a more critical eye.

>>why uv is important, drainage, micro fauna and such. they all say orchid bark looks like, top soil is fine too but none say anything about what to do about the white mold (it's eating sugar off the wood surface, it's fine), the white strings are the roots of mushroom...yeah yeah, they don't have roots, i know...LOL...they don't say anything about what could be in the Top Soil...like fecal or chicken manure...bat turds...all of these things are bad in an enclosed habitat as there isn't an ozone, the sun and weather. instead in the habitat there will be fungus blooms, bacterial loads that are too high UNLESS the habitat, it's soil profile and the microclimates are regualted. this has to be done at the construction to ensure the right life supports are in place long before the animal is brought home, which is backward to reality many times!

Again, I totally agree. My first vivarium experiments many years ago when books about vivariums didn't exist - well, those didn't yield the best results. Ten or fifteen years ago, if you wanted to put live plants in a snake cage you had to read up on plant terrariums to find out how to try to keep those plants alive. Books on vivarium design have come farther but still have a long way to go.

>>also i said the bit about the zoo as working with keepers for the last four years has shown me a narrow mindedness that hold fast to tradition and nothing to advancing the future of herpeticulture...

I have to agree with you here as well. I fight at my own zoo against our desire to tear down well-established enclosures far too frequently because of those same AZA/USDA regs that tell us we need to clean something whether it needs it or not. As result we often destroy well established plantings that have taken the better part of a year to get established and will just be getting established again when the cleaning time comes around again. There is also a narrow-minded mindset where keepers just don't want to do anything differently than it's been done for the last 20 years. But for all the guys that aren't willing to change or advance vivarium design in the zoo setting there are dozen more newer guys like myself that challenge the accepted ways of doing things and try to get the door open to doing things in a new more natural way. Of course a lot of zoo herpers will acknowledge that they owe many of their successes to advancements first pioneered in the private sector.

>>it's still important to think of all that could occur not just what some book says.

You definetely need to always research read and improve your knowledge and seek out new ways of doing things. So, can we finally agree that DeVosjoli is a good jumping off point to vivarium design, but only if you do a lot more reading from other sources as well?
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

Matt, yes, DeV. is a great start, as is henkle and others as ground breakers in the hobby - culture and from there folks should take a point to research more then just the animal. researching the habitat for the way it's natural design code
created the niches in which this or that herp lives. take that and then modify it so mechanically the vivarium is enuring the proper husbandry and this will only have through expermintation, design, contruction and education. It's good to meet you Matt.
contact me off line if you want sometime, i'd sure like to talk about zoos...LOL

Thanks,

Deven Nicholson
Terra5Designs.com | 925-465-1295
Walnut Creek California
Ensuring Animal Husbandry through Education and Habitat Design.

Deven,

Sounds like we got off to a bit of a rocky start there but it seems like we both have a lot of the same ideas. I've decided recently to put a hold on any acquisition of more animals [except in extreme circumstances - ie. animals I need to complete breeding groups etc.] - anyway I put more animals on hold because I really want to concentrate on vivarium design and construction - especially high-tech construction such as the use of automated systems for humidity and heating, creating microclimates, etc. Of course, the actual construction of vivaria - the raw materials and techniques is of great interest to me as well. We should definetely talk offline sometime. I looked at your website and some of your previous posts - you really seem to know your stuff and those custom vivs you created are pretty spectacular.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

in close...i hope...LOL i am not condeming(sp) his book. i am against books that only tried it once to get the photos and write a bio and sell a label.

yes i know the aza bit. i wish i could work with better zoos. zoos that had enough help financially to work with say, madagascar species as a captive breeding effort and work with hobbiests to ensure the survival of a species of genus.

I can't tell you what zoo but it's a sad snake. just lays there all day with out a mate. the currator tried to duplicate what i was doing in hopes of cancelling the job for other habtiats and failed. she put holly instead of oak, she cut living trees instead of finding felled ones, she refused a newer heating system and stuch with the old noisy blower fan...one keeper one currator one bad taste. you sound pretty even so accept my curt comments.

i found that in paludariums for snakes and larger lizards, it's
best to use a mix of MH and Phos lights, introduce dry air and build the "hides or burrows" far above the water line and of a concrete mix that is sealed of course but with two entrances. also i've found that having a uv sterilizer in the sump area or in-pond circulation system.

also, couldn't raiseing the water temps a bit help? just a thought, i've stopped working with garters and such as i'm trying to just create markets for more consumer awareness and most of our clients own a python or boa over even kings.

>>in close...i hope...LOL i am not condeming(sp) his book. i am against books that only tried it once to get the photos and write a bio and sell a label.

Well, I would've liked to have seen much more evidence in DeVosjoli's book of having used his system with more species, but still it at least has gotten a lot of people thinking outside the box in regards to how snakes are kept.

>>
>>yes i know the aza bit. i wish i could work with better zoos. zoos that had enough help financially to work with say, madagascar species as a captive breeding effort and work with hobbiests to ensure the survival of a species of genus.

Unfortunately most zoos won't work with private keepers even in regards to the species survival plans. Some zoos will work with people in the private sector to acquire animals or move on surplus animals, but it's becoming less and less as the years go by. Zoos these days seem to want to distance themselves from the private sector. It's tough for me sometimes because I'm involved in both and I find working a zoo to be frustrating sometimes but it's still the most rewarding job I've ever had.

>>
>>I can't tell you what zoo but it's a sad snake. just lays there all day with out a mate. the currator tried to duplicate what i was doing in hopes of cancelling the job for other habtiats and failed. she put holly instead of oak, she cut living trees instead of finding felled ones, she refused a newer heating system and stuch with the old noisy blower fan...one keeper one currator one bad taste. you sound pretty even so accept my curt comments.

That's too bad. I wish more zoos in the states worked with Taiwans as I'd like for our zoo to have some to work with. However, we won't acquire animals except from another AZA accredited facility and so with only about 6 zoos in the whole country holding sp. of E. taeniura and each one of them only holding between 1 and 3 or 4 animals, there's no stock for us to acquire.

>>
>>i found that in paludariums for snakes and larger lizards, it's
>>best to use a mix of MH and Phos lights,

Our zoo is currently doing a study on UV fluorescents and UV mercury vapor bulbs - I can't say more because we haven't published anything but so far it's yielded some interesting results. Also, fortunately my curator is open to new thinking and we've been talking a lot about light intensity in regards to some of our breeding projects as well as in regards to trying to provide better lighting for live plantings in exhibits.

>>introduce dry air and build the "hides or burrows" far above the water line and of a concrete mix that is sealed of course but with two entrances. also i've found that having a uv sterilizer in the sump area or in-pond circulation system.

This is whole new concept to the U.S. scene be it zoo or private sector - ie. the idea that an enclosure can actually serve as a miniature ecosystem if properly designed and constructed. We had a good discussion a few months back on the Cage and Habitat forum about trying to build microclimates into larger exhibits - ie. cooler or warmer burrows, elevated hides, etc.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

aza is creating a loss for conservation. a man that has a full time job and has found that breeding uroplatus or south american aboreal salamanders as a release will do it right but a zoo that could multiply the efforts won't work with this guy becuase he's a hobbyist. for that i don't like snobby nosed aza types...but i didn't say that out loud did i.

off topic - i found that it's based on landscape. micro climates are a relation as you know to landscape. in geology you learned that air flow in this or that way for this or that reason. just recreating it helps. in all our study habitats, 15 sq ft = 60"L x 30"W i've gone so fare as to plumb the water feature pipes through the substrate to a degree, thus helping the ground stay more then 10 degrees cooler then the higher points of the vivarium! sounds like a good topic.

Hey, Wow! This section of the forum had no postings whatsoever. All I go & do is send out a little "benign" feeler and it turns out to be this big "hot topic." Well that's cool. That's why I came here. I just got tired of asking so called herpers about vivaria and what I had in mind only to come up empty handed. Everyone just says to keep it simple, blah blah, put in some aspen shavings, a couple of hide boxes--one on either end of the setup--a water bowl and call it a day. It sounds a lot more like keeping gerbils to me. Eventually--as Deven knows--I want to get all of my critters into something closer to "home," not only because it's better for them, but because they'll be more interesting to watch. The last thing I want to do is harm them through lack of knowledge (plenty of that on my end) and healthy (or unhealthy if you will) applications of ignorance. I do know, however, that I want to take this snake and spider keeping thing beyond the livingroom (and kitchen), and even though this may be a project much larger than I had anticipated, I know it is one that will be more than worth the effort. I do appreciate you both for your comments and bickerings. This sure does beat reality TV. Rose