Creating a Habitat for Corn Snakes: Part 2

Video Transcript

"Hi I’m Debbie McCanna on behalf of Expert Village.com; We are talking in this clip about the care and maintenance of corn snakes. The second part of our feature on setting up the habitat deals what to put in once you have sterilized the tank with a 3 percent bleach solution, added your substrate and now are ready for the other contents to make your snake feel right at home. This is a ceramic heating rock. Heat is necessary to help reptiles digest their food. This heat source is going to go approximately in the middle of the tank, slightly buried toward the back where I can set the cord on the outside. I also have a stick-on thermometer so I can make sure the temperature can be maintained between 80 and 85 degrees. A little vegetation that the snake can use to climb on and some logs also purchased at the pet store and not taken from outdoors as they might have harmful parasites on them. Help the snake with exercise, the desire for climbing and during times of shedding, to loosen their skin. Many times one would think that these items are for your aesthetic pleasure but actually they are very beneficial to the snake and providing them a sense of a place to hide and again with movement throughout a natural looking environment which can assist them with behavioral aspects of living in a confined setting and with their skin care. Finally a shallow ceramic dish that needs to be placed away from your sources of heat and filled with non-chlorinated water; spring water, bottled water or distilled water or tap water that has been treated with a dechlorinator. Because a snake will sometimes totally submerge their bodies in here, you don’t want to overfill the bowl. Keep the bowl about half-way filled and replace the water twice a week. If your snake ever has a bowel movement in their water bowel it is important to replace the water immediately and to sterilize the bowl. All that’s left for us to do now is add our snake. "