Sand as a substrate?

[Pythoninfinite]

How do desert dwelling snakes survive in the wild?

If you read my post, you'll see I made a very clear distinction between wild and captive conditions. Our captive snakes have virtually no choice but to live the way we want them to - and generally we provide conditions that keep them alive, but not much more.

Jamie

 

[NickGeee]

If you read my post, you'll see I made a very clear distinction between wild and captive conditions. Our captive snakes have virtually no choice but to live the way we want them to - and generally we provide conditions that keep them alive, but not much more.

Jamie

Yeah, i was just having a joke

 

[Pythoninfinite]

!

J

 

[SarahScales]

There are a number of common misconceptions about sand as a substrate and these need to be corrected. Unfortunately Sarah someone(s) has been passing on incorrect information to you.

1) Unless the snake is able to move backwards I cannot see how that is possible. Besides, nything that is in the cloaca gets cleared out when the snake takes a dump.

2) Pure sand is inorganic and therefore cannot support bacterial growth. Just as well - as there are an awful lot of kids who spend an awful lot of time playing in sandpits. Proper removal of all waste, which you need to do with any substrate, will ensure that it does not turn into a growth medium.

3) I have never seen any hard evidence of this and neither have the reptile vets I have spoken to. Animals that occur in sandy areas don’t get to eat off paper. Any sand ingested is going to pass straight through, just like when little kids swallow a mouthful or more. The two major causes of impaction are lack of adequate hydration and physical narrowing of the bowel.

4) This is correct for snakes/pythons not occurring on a sandy substrate in nature.

5) Children playing at the water’s edge, be it salt or fresh, often get covered in wet sand but don’t go home sick. Nor do toddlers from swallowing some. Sand which contains bodily wastes and is kept moist, can breed bacteria, because it provides them with food and water. The same is true of other substrates. However, some substrates do have an inhibiting effect on bacterial growth due to chemicals present in them.

(The use of common examples is just to illustrate and support.)

Blue

2) My issue is not sand itself as the medium for bacteria growth, it is the fact that faeces and urate are so easily hidden in sand which allows bacterial and fungal growth to occur. Not to mention the sand that the OP was using is only screened, allowing any organic material small enough to pass through into the sand which can serve as the medium for bacterial growth. I have used this sand myself for the bottom of fish-tanks and often find lots of plant matter floating on the top during rinsing.

3) I have physically been present at the removal of a large calcium deposit formed in the intestine of a Childrens python. Admittedly it was not the build up of sand that caused the impaction, but the sand itself was caught in the intestinal wall and calcium fastened itself to the obstruction over time. The obstruction itself was not purely sand but it was sand that caused the obstruction.

5) The difference being small children go home and are bathed after playing in sand they are not stuck in the wet sand day in and day out, which would certainly cause illness. Reptiles are also very different to mammals physiologically, as I am sure you are aware. I am also not sure what the relevance of this response is to balancing humidity in a sandy environment. My point is that sand is difficult to keep clean in humid conditions, wet sand will stick to the body of the snake and dry sand is both too dusty and will cause problem sheds. The point is that sand is unhygienic on the most part unless the OP intends to remove all of the sand and change it after the snake defecates. As you yourself said, if the sand is kept moist (providing humidity for our animals) bacteria can breed.

I repeat, sand is a very poor choice of substrate and there are many many more viable, cheaper and equally as aesthetically pleasing options.

 

[Trimeresurus]

1) Sand can indeed build up and form a dry crust in & around the cloaca of a snake. They very often extrude part of the bowel when passing waste. This is wet, and can become coated in sand before it retracts. If the snake doesn't pass another bowel motion for a week or more, this stuff, together with the moist bowel "juices," can set like cement. Parallels shouldn't be drawn between wild and captive situations here, because captive conditions very often modify the way snakes do things, such as passing bowel

Hey mate, could you please elaborate on the bowel movements being modified by captive conditions part? I'm curious as to exactly what you mean by it. What would they do differently in the wild (snakes that live in/around sand).

Thanks

 

[andynic07]

I think that you will find sand to be not the best of choices even for practicality reasons. Sand in the tracks for sliding glass is a pain and your full substrate clean outs will be messy and hard unless you vacuum. I know people who have used sand as substrate and it is always only for a short period and then they go back to more conventional substrates.

 

[Umbral]

I have found critter crumbles to be the best to work with for a few reasons:

1.) It looks good.

2.) It's easy to spot clean.

3.) My snakes seem happier on it (My womas seemed to hate the feel of paper or synthetic grass my others didn't seem to care.)

I do still use sand with my Pygmy bearded dragons and Flavi and this seems to work best for them.

 

[Pythoninfinite]

Hey mate, could you please elaborate on the bowel movements being modified by captive conditions part? I'm curious as to exactly what you mean by it. What would they do differently in the wild (snakes that live in/around sand).

Thanks

Probably the main thing is the frequency and nature of bowel movements, caused by the relative lack of exercise our snakes get in small enclosures. If you watch a snake crap when you take it out on the lawn, very often the bowel is extruded quite a long way before retracting, and the snake may move quite a distance while undertaking the activity. In an enclosure the confinement can affect the way the snake moves at this time. Another thing is that except in blowing dune country and along the beach, sand has a fairly firm crust on the top of it. Even in desert/spinifex country it mostly (not always) has a crust on it, so it bears no resemblance to the loose, free-flowing stuff we put in an enclosure.

Really though, there are very good and well-established reasons why sand is not a recommended substrate. Of course I used it for years when I was first keeping because we had no alternative and knew no better, but all of the things already mentioned I have experienced in the past. Along with all the above, the fact that it is a "cold" substrate makes it quite unsuitable. It loses heat very quickly, being finely divided (unlike rocks).

Although Bluetongue 1 seems to suggest that it underrated as a substrate, it is not recommended for very good reasons, and anyone with experience will concur with me.

Jamie

 

[Trimeresurus]

[MENTION=1228]Pythoninfinite[/MENTION] I fully agree that it's not a good choice, I was just curious as to what factors you meant in relation to bowel movements in captivity/wild. Thanks for explaining!

 

[champagne]

No. Sand is not an acceptable substrate for snakes in general for a number of reasons.

1) Sand can become lodged in the snakes vent.
2) Sand harbours bacteria like crazy, even when you think you have accurately cleaned your enclosure, filth is often hiding in the layers.
3) Sand can become ingested whether it is your intention or not, it's has the risk of causing impaction.
4) Sand and its dust can become lodged in the nostrils and depending on the species also their heat pits, this can irritate your animals respiratory system and cause an infection in the long term.
5) When balancing cleanliness and humidity, sand simply does not work. Wet sand is unhygienic but dry sand will cause poor sheds.

Turf, newspaper, paper towel... There are plenty of alternatives to using sand in a snakes enclosure Best of luck with your new babies!

I would love to know where you are getting your information from....
1) even if it does become lodged (which I highly doubt would happen) If you have provided a large enough water bowl the snake will soak.
2) Coco fibre will have more bacterial and fungal growth in it then sand but if you are cleaning your enclosures it wont be a problem.
3) I have kept snakes on fine coco fibre for years with no problem, I feed them in their tubs the rat gets covered in the coco fibre and none have had any problems or died yet.
4) Can you show me evidence that a snake has got infection from being housed in sand?
5) Dry sand will not cause poor sheds.... Dehydration causes poor sheds and a lot of other problems in captive snakes.

personally I wouldn't use sand because it gets everywhere but a lot of reasons people are coming up with are from multiple husbandry problems not just from the sand.

 

[Pythoninfinite]

If the snake soaks, then leaves the waterbowl and covers itself in wet sand, the problem just becomes circular. Coco fibre is organic and not an abrasive like sand. We're talking extremes here, but overall, sand is definitely not recommended as a substrate for common pet snake species for a range of reasons, regardless of whether it supports bacterial growth or not.

It's fine for lizards of many species.

Jamie

 

[Bluetongue1]

Pythoninfinite, I quite deliberately did not pass any value judgement on sand as a substrate - other than point 4), where I agreed with Sarah, except for maybe the genus Aspidites. These species seem to cope well with a quality sand substrate but will do equally well in other appropriate substrates.

For those that use sliding glass doors, sand can be a major hassle if the animals are prone to throwing it up into the glass tracks.

I would suggest that there are two issues if snakes are building up a dry crust of sand around the vent: Firstly, it is not an animal that spends its life in sand and secondly the sand is actually a loam containing silt and/or clay sized particles, rather than pure sand. It is not sand that is lodged in or around the vent. Loams can make for an excellent substrate for specific animals when used appropriately – initially wet down for the animal to create its burrows in and then allowed to dry, which forms a solid, non-collapsing mass.

The third major cause of constipation is likely lack of motility of the colon. Severe constipation, regardless of the cause, can result in impacted faeces. With lack of motility it does not matter what the nature of the indigestible material. Snakes have a much reduced muscular surrounding the intestines. Where we have two layers allowing segmentation and mass movement contractions, snakes have only the one layer and depend up physical movement of the body to push the contents along. There are two things that help here – exercise outside their enclosure and a low branch or pipe that they have to crawl over to get from one end to the other. Good hydration has a countering effect to the continued extraction of water from faecal matter in the colon. So water changes no less frequent than every second day will assist here.

There are many sharp bits that are ingested as part of the prey item and sticking to the prey item, particularly those snakes which eat fish. The bowel lining is adapted to cope as it produces a significant amount of mucus to protect the gut cells from stomach acids and sharp objects. Sand is not going to scour the lining of the intestines.

Sand does not lose heat very quickly. Yes, it is finely divided but with minimal air flow. It has the same high specific heat as the mineral it is composed of, be that quartz (silica), calcium carbonate, olivine etc. So it is slow to heat up, particularly if only irradiated from above, and slow to cool down. It will change temperature more rapidly that a solid chunk of the same mineral but the difference is not going to be huge for such fine particulate matter.

With respect to bacteria wet sand – why would you need to be exposed day after day to finely get sick? As a kid, if I trod one rusty nail it was of the doc’s to get a tetanus booster. I have cleaned up animal wastes in sand substrate and Breeder’s Choice. It was much easier to determine where the wet sand finished that it was with the Breeder’s Choice. I was also very specific about pure sand and no organic matter.

What was not discussed was the nature of bacteria. Moist soil has lots of organic matter and living bacteria and fungi yet plenty of burrowing reptiles live in full time. It is the potential pathogenic bacteria in the gut and the their potential to produce toxic levels of wastes that can be of concern. Given that snakes like Mulgas and BHP have been known to eat their own wastes without showing any ill effects, it would have to be exceptional circumstances to do damage.

Sarah, you quoted an example of a snake where calcium was being deposited in the intestine on sand particles. There is more going on there than simple impaction. Is it possible for you to provide a technical explanation of the physiology behind what was happening? I have a good understanding of the physical structure of the gut, its gross functioning and the biochemical pathways involved, as well a fair understanding of the complexities of calcium/phosphate homeostasis.

Totally aside from the misconceptions I endeavoured to correct, sand is an appropriate substrate for some reptiles but not others and some cage structures but not others. But the term sand is misunderstood and covers a myriad of particulate inorganic materials, some of which fit the geological definition but many of which do not. Certain sands and certain loams are appropriate for certain animals but you need to know what is what. Any sand is not appropriate for most snakes and with the couple of species well suited to there are easier substrate to use that are equally suitable. The difficulties with sand are physical and not bilogical.

Blue

 

[HayleyChuck93]

I have heard all the info I need thanks! I have a woma so sand is fine, thank you people!


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[champagne]

although I guarantee you will change substrates once you try sand it gets everywhere... its good to try things for yourself just because it doesn't work for someone else doesn't mean it wont for you and visa versa

 

[HayleyChuck93]

Yeah I'm just gonna try it out and see how it goes


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[TrueBlue]

Cant go past butchers paper or newspaper for adults or paper towel for juvs.
Everything else imo dosnt come close for hygenic reasons. Plus as an added bonus snakes just LOVE to hide under it.
Ive tried many things over the years and paper is a mile ahead of them all.

 

[Pythoninfinite]

Mike, I didn't need an essay to point out what you were saying about sand. Sand can be intellectualised as much as you like, but in general terms, it is not a good choice for most snakes, and I believe that's what Sarah was trying to say. Experience will tell you that.
I've actually kept snakes for 50+ years, and using all sorts of substrates. Sand would have to be one of the least satisfactory of any of them. Newspaper/butcher's paper, as TB suggests, would have to be the best from a husbandry point of view.

Jamie

 

[getarealdog]

You could have a nice display cage with your sand in it & remove the snake to another "bare" cage to feed it & wait for it to pass a turd & then put it back. I do it with some of my adders only because cleaning the "display" cages is a pain in the a.... & I think they like the extra room/surroundings to explore. Having a few snakes keeping them in tubs with newspaper suits them & me better. Works for me but you do what you think is right for you & your snake. Plenty of ideas posted here from many people. Cheers.

 

[Bluetongue1]

I agree Jamie and said as much in part 4) of my original post.

What I did not agree with were some of the criticisms levelled at the other points I made. So I explained why.

If I had the time I would have condensed my post as I was unhappy it turned out so long.

Cheers,
Mike