Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am very strict about keeping super clean cages for my animals welfare and my own. I dont have any problems with any cage but my dumerils boa. He urinates a lot. He is in a vision cage and i use newspaper as substrate due to convenience. I use a chlorhexidine solution in all of my cages and it usually keeps odors down. I wash down and sanitize my boa's cage twice a week and i still get hints of odor. It is frustrating. Any ideas? i dont like to use anything potentially dangerous like bleach. I also cant tear down my vision stacks and power wash them once a week which would be ideal (i do it about twice a year anyway).

When you say you wash the cages twice a week, can you explain how you 'wash'? I don't really detect much smell in my cages until cleaning day approaches. Sometimes snakes will void themselves right after a cleaning which is annoying. I use dish soap to clean my cages and I don't detect much smell unless I put my nose right up to it and still its not too bad. That and spot cleaning usually does it for me.

Dan

I remove waste ASAP and I too have never had any odor issues. Every 2 months or so I will change all the substrate and take the enclosures outside for a mild bleach solution cleaning and then air dry. I think they key is to removing it right away. Of course this is easier if you don't have large quatities of critters.