As my collection grows, the room for aquariums shrinks . My question regarding racks - how important is "exercise" for snakes? I am wanting to put my corns in some sort of rack/book case caging system.

I know that large scale breeders and anti-venom labs use sweater boxes or low profile cages of some sort. Is it not that important for the snakes to have a ton of room to move? I know I need the larger sweater boxes for the snakes to stretch out an have a thermal gradient, but that is about as far as my knowledge goes at this point.

One more question, if I may. If you use aspen as a substrate in your racks, how do you feed? My only options seem to be removing the snake for feeding or placing the food on a large "plate" of some sort to keep them from ingesting aspen shavings.

Thanks for your input.

Knox

I know what you mean about shrinking space . I believe the only time mine come out of their hides and cruise the tank is when they are hungry, anyother time they are tucked away. Everyone will have different opinions on this and I was thinking of doing the same thing with my corns.

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MARSHA
A man without a woman is a bachelor, A woman without a man is a genius!.

We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart!

Hello,

Feeding can be done in a feeding tub. Anytime a loose substrate is used with snakes, feeding tubs should be used.

Exercise can come in many forms. Handling your snakes and allowing them to "roam" over your arms,shoulders, and hands is a form of exercise.

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Thanks, Rich.

Venus, this is a good problem to have, right???
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Well, I have the feeding tub in use already:

.

I love handling my snakes, so that shouldn't be a problem...

Sounds like my next step is to tackle the heating. There's another can of worms altogether .

There are many questions and answers on Herp Habitats regarding heating and racking.

Yes it is a good problem to have and now I will have 3 empty tanks and now where to put them ....I dont like that, lol Time to move the bed out or as Merlin suggested once...make a frame strong enough to hold my bed and put tanks underneath...

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MARSHA
A man without a woman is a bachelor, A woman without a man is a genius!.

We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart!

Just registered there - with thanks to you in my introduction.

Thank you .

Last year when I had 190 adult snakes it necessitated going to a rack system. The rainbow boas and other snakes of that size were in 3' sterlite and rubbermaid storage containers with aluminum louvers in the sides. All of the snakes were on plain white paper towel. The bigger snakes got to go outside and play in the grass at least once a week while the smaller quicker snakes got their playtime in the bathtub. I kept the entire herp room at a constant 82 during the day with a drop to 75 at night. Never had to worry about the humidity being down here in Fl. That's why we have fog just about every morning. In the center of the room was a stack of vision enclosures for the big burms. The only problem with them was making sure that there were no leaks in the bottoms of their enclosures.(When one of those big burms urinated it sounded like a garden hose in there. )

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Fran
January 9, 1940 - June 1, 2006 (R.I.P)

I have heard the big pythons defacate like horses as well LOL.

Thanks for the input, Fran.

I notice some of you use human heat pads for your plastic enclosures. How long do these last? At about $10 each, if I need 5 of them, that isn't too bad if they last for a year at least (running roughly 12 hours a day)

Hello,

I use flex watt heat tape for the rack I made. (Mine is 4 tiers high for 27 quart sterilites.)

I have some human heat pads that are 2 years old and still work fine.

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