retic substrate

[scottyy]

what substrates other than newspaper will work well and cheaply?
Right now i have my girl on newspaper in her little bin. i realize she will outgrow that fairly quickly as i can already see that she is growing. When i upgrade her to her lifetime enclosure i want it to be all natural with some sort of a repti bark or something that looks nice because this is my only snake (for now) and i want her cage to look nice and would be willing to put in the extra money. Also if other substrates like mulch (with no dies) would work because you can get a big bag for fairly cheap and sense i will need a lot of it a small bag of repti bark for 15 bucks or something like that would take a lot to fill up a cage of that size.

[stephanbakir]

Pretty much all of the repti-barks work well, make sure to stay away from anything like sand, it gets under the scales.

Most of the retic owners i know use coconut fiber, it looks great and helps maintain humidity, its 7$ for 3 bricks last i checked.

You probably already know this but when retics get older they start putting out insane amounts of pee. Unless you plan on being there to clean it as soon as it happens your substrate needs to be able to absorb allot of moisture. Coconut husks do this quite well.

[scottyy]

yea i think that the coconut husks or fibers would be a good way to go because it holds moisture well. it should look fairly nice. yes she does pee a lot... unfortunately she doesnt do it in her cage much, she will do it while i am holding her or take her out to clean her cage or whatever, but gotta love her lol.

[stephanbakir]

just wait till shes a big girl, had a friends 19 foot retic pee on my X girlfriend, wasn't pleasant...

[scottyy]

hopefully she will do it when i give her a soak to make it easier to clean but i doubt that i would be that lucky lol

[stephanbakir]

Retics love taking aquatic poos, almost like clock work.
Give em a bath every 2 weeks or so when you expect a poo and just sanitise the bath after.