I have raised boas and pythons all of my life and tried all of the substrates. In my opinion there is nothing better than newspaper. If you don't like the look of newspaper there is indented craft paper. Snakes are clean animals and paper makes it very clean for them and easy for you. I don't like loose substrates in any form. Snakes in the wild don't live on piles of wood or bark chips and and there is the issue of ingestion as all my snakes are fed in the cage. The reptile carpet sounds nice at first but you need several sets of them and constant washing. Spot cleaning does not remove soaked in urates. Bill
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...three years ago it was just another snake cult...
The Retic is King.
Anacondas-the other Dark Side.
Afrocks-the dark side of the Dark Side.