Snake Cage Substrate

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Johan Svahnstrom on behalf of Expert Village. Now, when you've bought the tank and found the right location in your home it's time to start putting it together. The first thing you're going to do is choose the substrate, the bottom substrate for your tank. There are a few ways you can go. One of the ways is a natural tank with potting soil, plants and so forth. Those things are beautiful to look at but they tend to be very cumbersome to clean. You might want to stay away from that in the beginning unless you have a lot of time on your hands because you are going to spend a lot of time cleaning a tank. The second way, the total extreme opposite of that is to use a sterile tank, just use newspaper as the bottom substrate. That is probably the easier thing but it's not so ascetic, it's not so good to look at. The third option is what I always choose for most of my snakes, it's the Aspen bedding. The Aspen bedding is a great substrate to use. It is quite good looking. It is easy to clean and easy to buy. You can find it almost everywhere. You can clean it easily by finding fecal matter and so forth that is lying right on top of the substrate. You don't have to look for it like you would have to do with potting soil. The way I do it, I actually use newspaper on the bottom first and then I put my Aspen on. About two inches deep or so is usually perfect. If you do have a snake that is a digging snake, like one of the sand boas or something like that you might want to have it a little deeper or even a hog-nosed snake. Boas, pythons, colubrids, about an inch and a half to two inches or so of Aspen, this is great."