Creating a Habitat for Corn Snakes

Video Transcript

"Hi I’m Debbie McCanna on behalf of Expert Village.com; In this clip we are talking about the care and maintenance of corn snakes. Today I will be showing you how to set up a proper habitat with all the necessary living requirements for your snake. This is a 20 gallon long aquarium. Corn snakes are ground dwellers rather than arboreal and so having a larger surface area for movement horizontally is more important than vertically. You will also notice what looks like a bumper sticker on the underside of the glass from the bottom I have a heating pad that will plug in and provide heat underneath the substrate that will radiate up through the substrate. It is important to remember when putting in your water source that you don’t want your water source near the heat source. Spilled water can result in cracked glass. The type of substrate to use needs to be a treated reptile bark specifically for the purpose of maintaining your reptile. This has been heat treated so as to eliminate the opportunity for parasites and mites to be in this substrate, do not take substrate directly from the ground. Also this material the reptile bark will tend to absorb a lot of humidity and help to keep your snake skin very healthy. You need a little bit more. Not quite 2 inches yet. If the substrate seems a little dry you can take some bottled water or distilled water or water that has been dechlorinated and gently sprinkle a little bit on it and let it soak in. I don’t have the heating pad plugged in just yet while I am setting this up so there is no risk at this point of the glass being damaged. The bark will absorb this moisture and help to raise the natural humidity in the tank to the desired 40 to 85 percent. "