Bioactive Viv!!! Based on "The Art of Keeping Snakes"

After spending a summer in a biology station and witnessing so many wonderful snakes in the wild....I have come to appreciate reptiles in natural environment more than ever. And in an effort to provide the best for my snakes at the moment, I've followed "The Art of Keeping Snakes" by Phillipe de Vosjoli to create a terrarium that is more stimulating for my snake and pretty to look at.

It took a bit of work, but as much as I expected. The bottom is a layer of unscented & cat liter (with a small piece of PVC for better ventilation), followed by a middle layer of a peat/soil mixture and topped with the bioactive substrate system mixture (the BSS) which was made from mixing sand, orchid bark, trap rock, soil, and more peat.

I also planted a 3 live plants....and hopefully they won't be crushed too soon.

Here are some pictures:










I even upgraded my ball python, Dorothy, though she seemed to be a bit confused by the new set up

These are beautiful!!

I've thought about doing some of those. Yours looks great! Maybe some day.

Wow great job please keep updating on the benefits and or challenges this beautiful viv involves

I love this! Now I want to do that with my empty 20 gallon...

It's too bad I can't keep plants alive, because I always admire these set-ups. The one for your corn looks like a tiny, living piece of the woods captured in a glass case. It must be a lot of work though. What do you have to do to clean them up, and how often?

I too have the same questions as asked above.

These look great. Do you put some sort of landscape fabric down to keep them from burrowing all the way down?

They look great! That's an excellent book.

That is amazing. I would absolutely love to do this, only I don't think the plants would last very long. I've never been good at keeping plants alive. :[

I *think* (correct me if I'm wrong) the idea is that you actually clean LESS because the substrate actually houses bacteria that break down the waste.

As I understand it too, that is the idea. They can be quite a bit of work to get going but once everything is settled you don't have to clean at all or only a little spot cleaning once in awhile.

It's an interesting idea....I'd like to see it on a large scale (maybe a whole room sized viv) that you could have several animals in...

Does it count as cohabbing when they are in a room sized enclosure? :shrugs:

I would guess that if there's enough space for them to get away from each other then it would be okay. Except that if you find one funky looking poo, you'd have to assume all animals to be infected... though if they are sharing a viv, they are probably sharing the same bugs too.

I really like what you did with it. I found that book to be very fascinating and I used the principles in it to construct a tree frog viv that I maintained for over two years in my classroom without a substrate change. It worked really well and housed 5 Cuban treefrogs and a house gecko.

I am not a fan of these type of tanks. I personally feel that we can get to lazy and not clean the cage enough.
It may work for some people and professional keepers for displays due to them working on them all the time but most of us are just to naturally busy. After working 8 hours a day and 3 hours of commuting, i would not want to deal with a setup like this for a snake. I do for my frogs but I dont have substrate in the cages a water bottom and just glass.
I find tubs to so much easier. Empty, spray disinfectant, wipe and then re add aspen.

But mind you, a cage like tis may be better suited for brown or red belly snakes who both are smaller species of snakes.
Plus if you are a breeder or plan to breed, you wouldn't want to deal with 15 plus cages like this.