housing my baby corns

i just received my 4 baby corns from rich, which i must say are beautiful and very healty specimens. i brought a 65 gallon screened reptile vivarium which has a light stand and hung from the top. also on the side with the light i have a heat rock. there is plenty of hide spots for the snakes to hide as well as plastic vegitation for them to climb and explore. i have reptile bark for the flooring and a large rock water dish in the middle.my question is : is this an aceptable enviorment for the corn snakes. from what i have read in the posts the corns dont need a whole lot of humidity,except when its time to shed. since all the sides are mesh i'm not sure how much humidity it will have. is this ok...

Toss the hot rock. (or return it if possible!) They can develop hot spots and burn your snakes.

Is the light inside the cage? It needs to have some sort of wire guard around it to prevent the snakes from coming in contact with the light.

I'm not fond of screen or mesh cages for any snakes. Besides it not keeping in humidity, which may or may not be a problem, they also don't hold heat and are more subject to varying room temperatures. Also, some snakes will rub their nose on the the mesh and develop nose rub. (Also, I don't think they look that great )

And since you are housing them together, do you know the risks? In the end, it's a personal choice, but you should be making an informed decision.

Good luck with your new snakes

Go with somethung smaller!

A smaller seperate enclosure would make your snakes feel more secure. It will also make feeding them much easier because you can throw in a pinky and leave it without having to worry about which snake will eat it.

Seems fine except for heat rock. I've never used one but have been told bad reviews on them. If the snakes seem happy enough then thats all that matters...but one thing...if you are keeping them together ALWAYS FEED SEPARATELY!! Never just throw in a mouse (I always feed in a separate container anyway so they never 'mistake' your hand for food).
HTH

It's important to feed in a seperate container not only if you are housing multiple snakes together, but also if you have a substrate that could be ingested, like any wood chips.

I still feed 2 of my snakes inside their cages: my tree boa, which eats off the ground, and will bite you no matter what (and it's a pain to get her off of her perch when I need to), and my colombian boa, which I think would be a bit unfeasible to put in a seperate container when she gets to be adult size, plus she's a pretty aggressive feeder and knows when there's a rat defrosting. Don't want an accident

A few points that I'd like to touch on...

Screen enclosures- poor choice for housing any snake. They don't maintain temperature or humidity. Also, snakes can easily escape from most of these.

Hot rocks- he best thing that you can do, if you want to keep the rock in the enclosure, is cut the cord off. Hot rocks have the potential to cause far too much harm.

Large enclosures- While such a large enclosure is suitable for adults, neonates can find it to be intimidating.

Communal housing- To avoid problems, including cannibalism, I'd go with one snake per enclosure. Corns, like most snakes, don't actually benefit from communal housing. On the contrary, it increases the potential for various problems, and makes monitoring an individual snake's health problematic at best.

Hey BX Bounty Hunter,

Just curious, is that the package that is advertised at Reptilshack.com? I saw it quite a while ago when I was thinking about getting a corn. After talking a bit about it on here, I decided it would be a bad investment. Mostly because of all the things said above.

Also, are they mixed sexes? because if they are, you'll want to keep them apart for at the very least, breeding season. If a female gets pregnant early it can be very bad.

As for everything else that the others have said about putting corns together, I agree with them!

hi rainey,
i tried to look up the site you posted but could not get it. the cage i'm talking about it the Apogee Reptarium Reptile Habitats i think they have a site to see it. let me know if this is what you were talking about. so far it seems to be ok tempature and humidity wise. as for feeding i do put them in a seperate critter cage to feed them. the cage really looks sharp. but probley better for larger snakes.

i want to thank everyone for responding to my post. the information is very helpful.

The enclosure is basically the same as the one I saw.

But I forgot to say welcome to the forum. I hope you learn lots here!

What kinds of corns did you get from Rich? and when do we get to see pictures??

Good luck with your corns!

hi rainey thanks for making me feel at home here. i have 1.1 fluresent orange corns and 1.1 hypomelinistic corns. did not name them yet. and i will have pics soon. the cage is working out nice so far but the only downfall with it so far is getting in to it. the way i have it is long ways up so everytime i want to get in it i have to unzipper it. but other wise it really looks sharp. pictures are comming....

I can't wait to see pics! Sounds amazing!

Are these your first 4 snakes? I wish I could have gotten mine from Rich, but I'm from Canada and they'd cost about $450 each to get them here. So it's just not worth it!