I think I'm done.

[Roman]

I never understood why anyone would like to keep his/her reptiles in a tub or a rack for an extended period of time. In my opinion a tub, a rack or a tank/aquarium is a suboptimal way to keep any reptile.

The biggest disadvantage is the fact that all of these solutions are top opening, so everything you do (maintenance, feeding etc) you do from above your reptile. For a reptile everything coming from above is usually a BAD thing (e.g. bird of prey), so each time you open the lid your reptile will be nervous, afraid or ready to defend itself depending on it’s personality. In time it will probably learn that the usual manipulation is not so bad after all but at least in the beginning this puts additional (and avoidable) stress on the animal.

I want to be able to watch my snakes, to see their behavior, their moving around or just sitting on a branch or inside their hiding, but I want to do this without having to disturb them. While some tubes with clear plastic walls might enable you to see them, pulling a tub out of the rack to watch them is definitely a disturbance for them.

The racks or tubs I have seen so far are not big enough to keep even a medium sized snake (100 cm / 3ft or longer) in them for an extended time. I might be wrong and there are bigger tubs out there, but so far I haven’t seen any.

I use tubs for putting some of my snakes in during any extended maintenance, if I have to separate them for feeding or as a short time/emergency quarantine enclosure, but never for any longer period.

Originally Posted by EL Ziggy

@ Sirtalis- What standards are you using to measure good health and what do you think the quantifiable benefits are of bioactive enclosures? I've kept critters in tubs, tanks, and pvc enclosures but I haven't noticed any differences in their eating, shedding, pooping or activity levels. They all seem to be thriving as far as I can tell.

It’s not so much about bioactive or not but about enrichment.

“eating, shedding, pooping”, you might also add mating, that’s just the basic survival. It probably shows how hard to kill some of our “pet reptiles” like ball pythons, kingsnakes, corn snakes etc. are if they can be kept under such minimalistic conditions these “reputable, successful breeders and thousands of keepers” do. But the most basic living conditions, the least space possible, is this really what we want? Speaking solely for myself this is definitely not what I want. I restrict the amount of snakes I keep in order to provide every snakes with enough room to move around and different options for temperatures, light intensity and UV as I described in my previous post.

El Ziggy, there are numerous studies showing that reptiles in general and snakes in particular benefit from enrichment in their enclosure. Enrichment in providing enough room to move around in any dimension, gradients of light (including UV), thermal gradients, structured environment (branches, multiple hides and covers etc) and different food to just name the most basic form of enrichment.

Just a few examples
Gordon M. Burghardt: Environmental enrichment and cognitive complexity in reptiles and amphibians: Concepts, review, and implications for captive populations

Meredith J. Bashaw et al: Does enrichment improve reptile welfare? Leopard geckos (Eublepharis macularius) respond to five types of environmental enrichment

Simon Bourguigne: REPTILE HUSBANDRY CONSIDERATIONS FOR VIVARIUM DESIGN

There are many more reports (peer reviewed papers as well as anecdotal reports). If you are interested, you should consider to join the facebook group “Advancing Herpetological Husbandry”, this group has proven to be a wealth of interesting information for me and the file section is a real treasure trove.

Originally Posted by Bandit

I feel like the whole "replicating the wild" thing is a load of bs. Even if you go bioactive, you are still putting your animal in a controlled and sterile environment, just to a lesser degree than one that's in a tub. You'll never get anywhere near a true replication of the wild when keeping something in captivity. You'll see more healthy animals in tubs than you will in the wild, where they have to encounter predation, disease, lack of food, etc. on the regular.

Sorry for the rant...again, I don't have a dog in this fight and I personally am not a fan of tubs (and I have nothing against bioactive setups). I just can't stand when people acting like their setups are superior because they go bioactive.

A bioactive enclosure is up to a certain point a “controlled environment”, but it is certainly not sterile. The specific characteristic of a bioactive enclosure is the “cleanup crew”, but this crew consists not only of millipedes, springtails and isopods, the real working crew are the bacterial destruents.

By going bioactive an enclosure is not necessarily superior to a non bioactive setup, but if you use living plants as part of your “naturalistic” setup you provide an additional form of enrichment.

Originally Posted by craigafrechette

I think the several comments have proven that going bioactive isn't "the right thing". That user has been proven by several people to be misinformed and unreliable, as well as ignorant. The thousands upon thousands of keepers who keep their snakes in tubs can't all be wrong, especially considering the world's most successful and reputable keepers and breeders primarily use tubs.

This is a nice killer argument. So if thousand upon thousand people where convinced the earth was a disk this makes it true? If they thought the sun would turn around the earth this makes it true??

Who are these “world's most successful and reputable keepers and breeders [who] primarily use tubs”? Famous breeders like Brian Barczyk?? That’s really a nice role model. Don’t get me wrong, I suppose Mr. Barczyk is a nice person, but the way he keeps his animals is just disgusting.