Death to Aspen!!!

[anji1971]

I haven't had any problems so far with aspen, but I also feed in a separate tub, at least for Deejay. Stitch is still more comfortable feeding in his own little house, but I put his food on a plastic lid, and watch him like a hawk while he's eating to make sure he doesn't swallow any aspen.
They don't usually just ingest the substrate during their regular activities, do they?? That's something I kind of wondered about; if burrowing around, they would end up swallowing some? Then I would definitely look to another alternative.

[tikichick]

I'm so glad you caught it in time!!!!!!

[Rook]

Rooks tank is half Peat half slate, I LOVE the slate, for all the reasons adamanteus mentioned. I use Slate tiles, its only $4 for 9 tiles.

[Loren]

I use aspen for many of my snakes, but I almost always raise young snakes on paper towels. I figure larger snakes can pass or digest bedding easier, where as little guys like baby garters would have much more of a problem if they ingest even a small piece of bedding. Generally I wait till snakes are 15" long or so before switching them to bedding, although I do have a few small species of snakes- ones that do not often exceed 12" or so( ringnecks, night snakes, ground snakes), which I keep on bark or fine sand.

[adamanteus]

Too heavy, too expensive. Do you have any alternative materials?

Roofing slate is heavy.... but not too heavy, as it it cut very thin. A well constructed timber viv can easily support the weight. Broken slate is usually free.... one of my favourite prices!

[Stefan-A]

Of course you're in the right business and able to get your hands on broken slate. Here, it's not really a popular roofing material either, slate is used almost exclusively in interior design and as you can imagine, that raises the price and reduces the availability a lot.

Concrete I could use, but it doesn't wipe clean in a second and it's not totally non-permiable.

[adamanteus]

No, concrete wouldn't really work in the same way!

[drache]

James
do you know anything about polished concrete?
I once stumbled upon a blog of a woman who put polished concrete slab in her home and stained it with coffee
it looked fantastic
I don't suppose that's the kind of thing one could put into a viv though
but wouldn't it be possible to seal just about anything with some sort of resin coat?
I like the slate and I've been keeping my eyes open when I pass construction site dumpsters - no luck yet

[adamanteus]

The need to seal it would be a drawback in my view. Plus concrete is very heavy.
You should be able to get sizable pieces of broken roofing slate from a builders merchant, you just need to ask.

[Sputnik]

I could imagine concrete could be quite dangerous. As moisture can penetrate it, it would be a great haven for bacteria, wouldn't it?

When I first read about James' slate flooring I was quite impressed and a couple of days later I passed a building site and asked the roofers if I could have a few pieces of the old slate that had been taken down.

A good scrub later and they went into all of my large vivs. It really works great! It warms up to a lovely temperature, doesn't get too hot (I have a thermostat anyway), but keeps the temperature for a while after the heater has been switched off. I know James seals his in, which I think I might do eventually, so far I have not had anyone slithering underneath, but my pieces are placed in loosely, so I can take them out and rinse all the soiling off. I also add some soft substrate like recycled paper animal bedding (like catlitter) in one corner on top, larger pellet types are best, so less risk of swallowing, as the snakeys love digging through it.