Getting interested in a snake...

[Louie]

The tank size will depend on which variety you get; there's a lot of variation even within species. Some of the bigger milks and kings get 6' or more, corns and most Lampropeltis are 3-4', and there are even some small varieties that seldom reach 3'.

You'll find different opinions on undertank pads. I don't like them; I only use heat lamps. Newpaper or butcher paper is a fine substrate for a bare-bones setup, but you can also provide a burrowable substrate such as aspen shavings, "chunky" coco bedding, or the paper-like stuff (Carefresh is one brand name) that's used for rodents. Avoid pine, cedar, and cypress; the first two have potentially toxic aromatic oils, the second is dusty and is harvested unsustainably.

Besides that, provide at least one hide, a heavy water dish (they'll burrow under and tip light dishes), and you're pretty well set.

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When my snakes got bigger and all got upgraded to 30 gallon plus size tanks I went with dome lights (black bulbs) for heat as it heated the air plus area in tank. Even in a 20 long its great.

However in a 10 gallon tank there isn't an area for the snake to go that would truly be cooler thus wouldn't use dome light on that.

UTH is great in snake room temp but my house in NY during winter was 65 and felt the over head heat was better and they seemed to like it. During spring /fall I stuck with UTH.

Here I don't use anything .

 

[fishy12]

We had a baby king snake in our yard rare to find. But my dumb sister kirb stomped its head......depressing

 

[Conner]

Awesome, thanks for the replies! I will look into some things at the pet store the next time I'm up there and see what they have to work with.

 

[Louie]

We had a baby king snake in our yard rare to find. But my dumb sister kirb stomped its head......depressing

Oh I hate reading stuff like this. They also kill them around here .

I imagine your sister is a kid and doesn't know but around here its adults who scream how they are afraid of snakes yet will actually chase one in their yard with a shovel to kill it.

 

[Conner]

Yah, back about 10 years ago, my family and I were all out of town, and my brothers sister-in-law (younger, but still in college) was taking care of our house. When we got back, she had to tell us all about this, quote "GIANT LEAPY BEAST OF A SNAKE!!!". She took us up to the end of the driveway to show us, and it was a little 12-13" garter snake . She had ran over it about 10 times with her car, to make sure it was dead, so it was as thin as a piece of paper. Sigh.