Bioactive Vivarium Lighting and Heating Suggestions

[AlmightyPancake]

So I am planning to buy my first snake soon (probably a Spotted or something similar) and although I know I'm making it harder on me I'd like to make up a bioactive enclosure for it to live in. With having a few plants in there with the snake I'm going to need to have a light for the plants, but I wanted to know if a UVB bulb would be enough to keep the plants alive? I know that pythons don't need UVB but I have heard that it can be benificial, and if it's enough for the plants I'd like to use that.
As for heating I am assuming I'd need to use a heat lamp or similar since I don't think a heat mat would get hot enough to penetrate the depth of substrate I'd need to keep the plants in?
If anyone has any experience or tips with this I'd love to hear them!

 

[Harpo]

G'day mate, firstly, getting a snake as a pet is awesome.
If this is your first, I'd keep it in a plainer boring tub set up for a year at least (strongly recommended if you get a young one) so you can dial in temps and humidity and husbandry and health, just to avoid any complications.

I would do the bioactive separate to the snake enclosure to get myself comfortable with each new thing separately. With snakes you can research forever, with bioactive you can research just as much, the two take skills to combine, with success. There are plenty of compromises you'll find that may be appealing, for example I love my semi naturalistic enclosures, they can look similar.

 

[AlmightyPancake]

Thanks for the advice! I'm going to get something on the younger side yeah so I'm definitely going to house it in a small tub for a while and work on the vivarium while I wait for it to get a bit older.