Meet Rusty!
 

Hi everyone. We bought Rusty for our 9 year old a couple weeks ago. He's been spending most of his time hiding so we've rarely seen him out and about until last night when we found him exploring his tank so seems to be settling in fine. We've handled him a few times but trying hard to give him time to adjust. This is our first snake so learning a lot. We got a 40g exo-terra that we've filled up with lots of fake plants to make it more "safe" for him and using UTH and a small CHE both on thermostat and both the ground and ambient temps are right around that 80-85F for the warm side and 70-75F for the cool side so that's looking good. So far he's eaten twice since we bought him so right on schedule and he had his firs shed since being with us a few days ago. Looked like a full shed too.

Could use some help with a few questions...

1. He's about 14 inches long and weighed 18g (before last feed & shed). Week before he weighed 14g so he's growing . I'm guessing he's about 3-4 months old. Does that sound right?


2. We were told he's a caramel morph from the local pet store we bought him at (not a big chain) but looking for verification so can anyone tell what morph he is?

Forgot to mention... We're using Kritters Crumble as the substrate. It's made of coconut husk and seems to be a good option but would love feedback on this vs. aspen

Congrats on your new snake, nice setup! One question: the plexiglass/glass on top of it, is it secured all the way around the top? They can be escape artists.
I'm not familiar with Kritters Crumble. I use shredded aspen, they love to burrow in it.

Depending on how often he was fed, he could be a few months old, or more.

What a lovely enclosure. :) I see so many boring empty fishtanks, it's nice to see something more naturalistic and pretty.

A lot of people really like coconut husk. I tried it recently in one of my racks and though my paler morphs look quite attractive on it, I was less thrilled when it came time to spot clean after a feed...trying to spot dark poop on dark bedding was rather slow by comparison. Needless to say it will be changed on the next bedding shipment.

For one snake, I think you'll be fine. If there's anything I've learned, it's that you can usually expect to find the poop attached to the most difficult to clean decoration in the tank. :laugh:

Thanks. The plexiglass top is not secured but the screen top below it is very well secured/sealed. I added the plexi as a means to trap in heat/moisture during our winter months.

Thank you. I wanted something that looked like nature and also looked good in our living room. You're right the downside of the coconut husk is spotting the poop especially when the snake is so young and the tank is full of enrichments. I may switch to Aspen for that reason but not sure on that yet.

Perfect. Just wanted to make sure.

Appreciate it!

what are the dimensions of this exo terra? Is it his forever tank?

i36x18x12 and yes will keep him in it as adult