JUNGLE SETTING

[Parko]

I'm after input on how risky is it to house tree snakes in a planted vivarium style setup,potted plants, sphagnum moss,birds nest ferns,orchids would all look great in a vivarium style setup and would help keep high humidity required for Banded tree snakes.I realise that more delicate plants would be trashed but was going to give it a go anyway,is it a very high risk for bad organisms/bacteria to the snake, provided dry areas are ofcourse also provided?
All input, positive/negative, is greatly appreciated, Matt.

[Fuscus]

I keep my water pythons at about 60 - 70% humidity using sphagnum moss (no live plants). Once a week everything is cleaned, scrubbed and placed back wet (except for a perch), raising the humidity to 90% for about 24 hours.

So far, so good and the the snakes look good and feed well.

[Slateman]

I am against live plants my self. To hard to keep cage clean.
Regarding house 3 snakes in one enclosure, I know few people who do this and have not problem, but generally it is not recommended. All depends what snakes , how big and if you are willing to feed outside encosure. All that is decision which you have to make your self.
There are cases where snakes eat their flet mates.

[Rina]

Natural environment is great but there are some great plastic varieties which give the same asthetic appeal. Allows better cleaning and control of parasites etc.

[NCHERPS]

I'm with Rina on this one, I have gone through plenty of live plants before, some living for months and some for weeks, but none lasted and looked great. so I looked into plastic plants for my most prized herps, and found some great looking artificial plants, mainly plastic which looked great and can be removed and cleaned easily, and if you are unfortunate enough to get mites, you haven't got a problem of live plants and trying to eradicate from the soil, leaves etc..
Also I found that with some plants, there wasn't enough UV along the right light spectrum, unless you have a pucker tube in there, and then of course not all reptiles are keen on bright tubes.

Good luck with what ever you decide to do.

Neil

[wattso]

Still looking for realistic artificial plants myself. not easy to find, most are gaudily colored vines from a "Dali" nightmare. Also difficult to find large strong broadleaf ones.

[Parko]

Thanks guys, yeah I know these plants will get hammered, what I was thinking was get a coco fiber panel which I saw at bunnings for planting orchids on and have it along the back wall so the snakes wouldn't be laying all over them. But as pointed out if I do get problems then it will mean taking out all the soil and plants and starting from scratch. I've seen photo's of european and American setups which were doing this and it looked fantastic, aesthetics versus engineering. Maybe a compromise some plants but not many, and no soil substrate.Anyway thanx again guys an gals.

[westhamsc]

bunnings

don't say the B word us mitre 10 workers hate that name lol
i don't use real plants in my snake cage monty ends up destroying them so fake one's are the way to go