Yeah I’ve been taking my time putting together optimal enclosures to upgrade my snakes to since they got here. Seconding doing this over many months, and early!
Plans keep changing as I find new solutions to their needs and to work out way to best retain ventilation vs humidity in the High’n’Dry Ski Country. Substrates, heat elements, lights, and an interior aesthetic that will be exciting for the animal and provide the cover amount they like…
"Starting with a simple sterilite bin or tub setup with a heat element, for a baby animal, then taking time to buy & build & set up something more complicated"
has been a good way for me to go, as I learn my snakes’ habits and their cover needs, and what kind of things they appear to do repeatedly and might find enriching. I’ve changed my plans for my House Snake’s enclosure based on what i think he’d find more stimulating and also make him feel covered and safer. Lots of stuff to hide in and under.
Currently battling a giant bloom of soil/moss mites- harmless to snakes but they ate my springtails! It’ll be a little bit longer before my bioactive is ready for Finnley.
And sorry everyone, I should have been more clear. By shortcuts I didn’t mean to imply rushing or doing a shoddy job, just little things you find to make a task more efficient and streamlined or less labor intensive.
For example, something I would consider a ‘shortcut’ that I learned recently would be that instead of shaping background foam by hand with razor blades, you can use a wire brush drill attachment to get a rocky texture.
I want to spend ample time on these enclosures, but I don’t want to spend 48 hours carving foam by hand if I can do it in 3 with a drill attachment - that’s all I meant by shortcut, sorry for any confusion!
Are you trying to do it all in one piece per side? I don’t think I’ve ever seen cork flats that big. But using multiple normal size pieces and using a silicone and coco fiber mixture you can hide all the seams and make it look very natural as well.
Oh no, I know I won’t be able to do it all with one piece, but I’d prefer to use a few larger pieces rather than a whole bunch of tiny pieces like what my local pet shop sells. I was planning to hide the seams with a combination of moss and coco fiber. I think that will look nice. I got a bunch of that pretty green moss, which I think will look lovely.
I’m just curious if anyone knows of vendors who have good deals on large-ish quantities of cork bark.
Another great question! Even the tiny cork pieces less than 6 inches long are usually more than $15 at my local pet store. Hopefully I can support a small business and get away from those expensive low quality chunks at chain stores if anyone knows a vendor
Exactly, that would be super expensive! I’m hoping someone can suggest a vendor who sells larger slabs of it in quantity for a more reasonable price. I want to compare that to the price of the treefern slabs @t_h_wyman mentioned. I like both those ideas (cork or treefern for a background). I feel like the treefern would be easier to plant, although I’ve heard you can plant cork too. And I like the look of cork better. I just want to know the price difference before I make a final decision. (I like the idea of planting the walls for this enclosure, since having live plants in the substrate of a blood python’s enclosure is…problematic.)
I’ve heard Maryland Cork is the best price for large cork orders, but I haven’t had the chance (or storage space) to contact them about pricing or set up an order.
Apart from that, I usually get cork from NEHerp - got a 5lb mix of flats and rounds for a little over $47 in my last order. I know Pangea has bulk boxes, along with Josh’s Frogs, but not always in stock.
There’s also agglomerated cork panels, a bit of a different look but maybe a bit cheaper. I got a couple of 39”x20” panels from Josh’s Frogs but there are bulk sellers online if you need a lot.
I’m planning on using them to make a cracked wall sort of look with moss and plants in the crevices.
Ooh I bet 5lbs of cork is a decent amount of pieces considering each chunk doesn’t weigh very much! I’d certainly imagine more than the 3 pieces of bad quality cork I could get for the same price at a chain store
Yeah, they seem to be more expensive these days. Most of the ones I found were $35+, and they were smaller, I think only like 12"x6" or something like that.
Were those single panels? A lot of the ones I found were sold as packs of two (which would still make the price higher than it was for me before but not hugely so)
