Can I Use Sand As A Substrate?

[Brock]

Can I use sand as a substrate for my leucistic Texas ratsnake? It will be pressed down hard so he can't get under it or get anything in his nose. I want a natural look and I can't find enough slate anywhere so sand is really my only option unless there are any other suggestions.

Thanks,
-Brock

[mark129er]

You could use sand but you would run the risk of irritated scales, and ingestion. The negatives outweigh the positives.

[Invictus]

Do not EVER use sand for snakes. That is the WORST possible substrate you can use. You can't pack down sand hard enough so that a snake can't inhale it or get it caught up in their belly scales. If you must have a "natural" look, get shredded aspen.

[vanderkm]

Shredded aspen or cypress bark will compress and provide quite a natural look and are less of a potential problem than sand (though some people have used it for colubrids despite the risk of irritation).

Some of the coconut bark products (Bed a Beast, etc) also look like soil and are quite natural though they are dusty if not kept damp and might result in too high humidity for a Texas ratsnake. I have found they were harder to spot clean completely though. Our best luck for absorbant bedding has been CareFresh ( a paper product) or Soft Sorbant (similar but lighter colored and smaller fragment size) but they may not look natural enough for your setup,

mary v.

[gonesnakee]

In reguards to slate you should be able to find a Mason or masonary around (IE: Burnco or something) or even a local landscaping co. should be able to direct you to some bulk slate. There is lots of it in B.C. should be available for sale in bulk if you look. Someones providing it for the stone work out there. LOL Mark

[snakehunter]

try in.outdoor carpeting, it comes in a variety of colrs like green brown and black, its cheap, and wjen dirty throw it in with the wash it works great for me.

[Beardonicus]

Sand is NEVER the only option......aspen is good, but paper towels/newspaper is even better. Safety before aesthetics.

[Brock]

Thanks for the replies, I will look around again for some slate.

-Brock

[BoidKeeper]

A million times thank you for asking first! Good on ya!
Cheers,
Trevor

[Stockwell]

I've used sand successfully for Grey banded kings and Transpecos rats, but in addition to the other listed concerns, I don't really recommend it because It's too damn heavy, it ruins rack systems, scratches stuff, and ends up tracking all over the house.
Every time you pull the snake out, it will spill some sand.

Also I should caution you about any use of rocks.
Rocks can and frequently do injure herps that insist on digging under them.
You should silicone them in a stable position so they can't fall.
I generally only use bark...it's much lighter, and poses no crushing harzard. I collect my own, so it costs nothing and is a good excuse for some fresh air

[Tigergenesis]

How about ground walnut shells as a substrate (for a kenyan sand boa)? In particular the Desert Blend Lizard Liter. Is this an okay substrate if feeding in a different container?

[Brock]

I heard walnut shells were toxic. Can anyone second that?

-Brock

[BoidKeeper]

They are to me I'm alergic to nuts! I'd hate to have to have my epi-pen in hand while cage cleaning.
Cheers,
Trevor

[Brock]

How about leaf litter? I was just talking to Rachel (from the site) and she lives in Texas and says I should use leaf litter.

-Brock

[Vanan]

Leaf litter? Unless you can disinfect it by "cooking" it a lil. :)

[Brock]

That's what I was planning. I always bake stuff thoroughly before using it. Nice to hear from you Vanan, how's the prairy life treatin ya?

So I can use leaf litter?

-Brock

[eyespy]

The toxicity of walnut shells is debated. Black walnut has some phytochemical in it that is a strong purgative, but is there enough of the stuff in the shells to qualify as a toxin?

But the shells have an extremely high cellulose content and take days or even weeks to break down in a strong acid bath. They do not tend to break down in the guts of reptiles and are abrasive enough to cause intestinal bleeding if ingested.

[Vanan]

Heya Brock, prairie life is good! :)

eyespy, I think what it all boils down to is if you're gonna be feeding your snake in it's substrate or not. If you're not worried about ingestion, there's a lot more options out there.

[eyespy]

Even if you don't feed a snake on the substrate, tongueflicking can cause ingestion. I've seen hundreds of impacted animals that were fed in separate enclosures.

[Vanan]

Even if you don't feed a snake on the substrate, tongueflicking can cause ingestion. I've seen hundreds of impacted animals that were fed in separate enclosures.

But isn't the rostral designed so that it only flicks the tongue in and out. Doesn't seem like substrate could get stuck on the tongue and still pass through that opening. What about wild snakes then?

[eyespy]

Sand and other small particles can easily pass. Even larger substrates such as bark and walnut shell often crumble so that smaller pieces are encountered.

Wild snakes probably do die from impaction at times. It's hard to say as dead snakes are usually munched up by carrion eaters and not necropsied.

[Vanan]

But don't you think those small pieces would pass through their system since their so small?

[eyespy]

Intestines aren't smooth like sausage casings. They are full of little fingerlike structures called villi that trap particles. When you open up snakes for surgery, you'd be shocked at how much non-food stuff gets trapped in there.

Particles ingested without food are more likely to cling to the villi than to pass through as there is no large food object to help push stuff through plus peristalsis, the muscular movement of the digestive tract, hasn't been stimulated by swallowing prey.

[Katt]

I haven't noticed snakes tongues to be "sticky", I find lizard tongues b/c of their breadth, pick up more stuff. Lizards, except for maybe monitors also tend to open their mouth more to allow passage of the tongue, than snakes with their tiny "tongue hole".

With our snakes, I've observed that when the peat moss we keep them on gets on the tongue, it gets sloughed off upon return of the tongue to the mouth. It collects on the rostral.

[eyespy]

Ever get an ultrasound to see what's accumulating in the small bowel? You might be shocked. Chronic impactions happen frequently enough that my friend David has been able to specialize in bowel resections and he does 8-20 surgeries a day, 5 to 6 days a week. Snakes make up about a fifth of his patients.

[MouseKilla]

I used to use that obsenely expensive so-called "ingestible" sand. It produces very little dust and looks nice and natural, that's the good news. The bad news is you have to spot clean it CONSTANTLY. It clumps up nicely like cat litter but even though you're scooping out what can be seen you leave behind a little bit of smelly juice so you have to change this stuff every few months or your whole house will be intolerably stinky. I lived with that for a long time, I had my cages in my living room and I wanted them to all be nice to look at. The idea of newspaper seemed ugly to me. Then I got a few more snakes and a few more cages and I spent at least an hour a day, sometimes much more, just sifting through this F ing sand so I could stand to sit in my living room. Then it occured to me that I was doing all of this work and only about 10% of it was actually for the benefit of the animal plus I was spending foolish amounts of money on this bloody sand. In the end I decided that it was more trouble than it was worth and the hundreds of dollars (no sh*t, hundreds!) I was spending on fancy sand could be spent on more snakes and I could have less work to do even with the additional animals.
Anyway, that Calci-sand stuff looks nice, they claim it's digestible (though I question that) but it will be a lot of money and a lot of work. If you only have a few cages and don't mind spending your time digging for snake treasure it may be the way to go.

[Tigergenesis]

MouseKilla - what do you use now?