Need advice BRB enclosure - A tropical planted terrarium good or bad?

[roberthein]

Hi Guys,

To start of, i suppose i should warn ya, hehe, im a total newbie in the pet snake buiss, so bare with me. That said, i do have pretty good experience in keeping chameleons.

But recently i bought a 2 year old female BRB, that is currently housed in a modified tub, the basic setup as we know it. Indeed it works well and easily cleaned, and maintain. But besides being easy maintained.. i must say, its not a very pretty thing :-P.

My questions is, if i was to do a planted rainforrest alike terrarium, would it be ok or a bad idea to house my BRB boa in it?.. Guess my concern is, wether it would be putting the snakes health in risk? Or is it better to keep them in a more "clean" environment?

Also i dont know how much work is involved, with cleaning a planted terrarium? Or does it clean itself?..

Gotta say i'd love to have my own slice of forrest in the room, but if im only asking for more problems than good, then it wont think further

Thanks in advance guys.

Cheers
Rob

[Snakesitter]

Rob--

It is possible to set up a natural, heavily planted vivarium with an insect cleaner crew, but there are two catches: one, it requires a lot of work; and two, the snake will often "redecorate" your careful planting. ;-)

However, I would at least wait until your quarantine period is complete before even attempting such a thing.

Good luck, and congrats!

[macandchz]

sounds like a big job with lots of work involved. i don't know how much burrowing a brb does but snakesitter sounds right about the re-decorating.

[eminart]

It has been done. Check out the enclosure and live plant sections on this forum. There are also some good bioactive pages on FB.

[bigsnakegirl785]

Yup! It would be fine. :) From what I understand, the initial set up is quite strenuous but once it's established it's generally just checking pH levels and such. Crashing does happen, which means you have to start over, but maintenance seems pretty low if you choose to add a cleaner crew.

Definitely check out your resources like eminart said, it will take quite a bit of research to start up a bioactive enclosure.

BRBs LOVE to dig, my rainbows bury themselves more than all my other snakes (other than my checkered garter). I do still often find them above ground in their hides, but they love to be buried.

[roberthein]

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the late reply.

First of thanks a lot for your feedback. Being a 'still newbie' in the hobby it sounds like im better of going for a more basic setup.

Instead i think i will build a mini vivarium setup and learn from my mistakes before i put my dear BRB at risk as test-pilot ;-)

Thanks.
Rob

[Snakesitter]

Sounds like a good plan -- please keep us posted!