Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm looking for some opinions on substrate. We are getting boaphile cages soon for our ball python and albino red tail and I was thinking about trying terrarium carpet in them. Right now my snakes have reptibark in their cages but its so messy and sucks when i have to scrub their cage. Those of you who have used the terrarium carpet did you like it? and did it hold humidity well? Also is there something else you think is better? Thank you!

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.

Bill mentioned the dimpled Kraft paper. You can get it at Uline.com. It looks like very thin cardboard in color with about 6-10 dimples per square inch which gives it texture for the snake to crawl.

Bark in Boaphile or other similar cages will drive you crazy when you clean cages. Aspen would be better if you want to stay with a particulate substrate.

Home Depot sells a package of packing paper that is light gray in color. It is essentially unprinted newspaper. It works well but is very smooth. I crinkle it up some to at least give it some texture. It works well, but I prefer the dimpled paper from uline.