First reptile - setting up 40gal tank to be 'bioactive'?

Hi there

My partner and I recently adopted a 1.5 year old female corn snake from an enthusiast who had to rehome all of his reptiles. She's maybe 3 feet long and we have her in a 40gal 'breeder' tank which she came with. We currently have her hide, CareFresh as substrate (it's all our local shop had and it's also what our bunny uses), her heating pad, and a plant, and a thermometer.

I have seen her and my youngest black cat in deep conversation! Snakes are wild! Hehe

Anyway, I don't want her to be bored, and frankly her tank seems boring. She has some extra fake plants coming from Amazon soon, but we also want to set up her tank to be 'bioactive' so that she can have some entertainment. However, we live in an apartment building and are very happily living a pest-free existence.

The information about setting this up is a bit daunting for someone who is still getting over a low-key fear of snakes and has zero reptile knowledge. (We decided we wanted a red cornsnake and then I happened to check Craigslist - there she was! I had been planning on being more prepared... ) I know I'll want different substrate, a variety of buggos, and... ?

Thank you so much for your help!!

I have bioactive substrate for my geckos, but not my snakes.
I use organic soil, I bake it.
I put a drainage substance on the bottom, you can put screen over it if you want, I usually don't.

I use springtails and isopods in the soil, and some sphagnum moss.
I put dried maple leaves in for the isopods, as well as some bark.

I'm surely no expert, but I keep some pet millipedes and some isopods in bio-active containers with springtails and for all of these invertebrates I find that I need to keep the substrate quite damp in order for them to do well. I know people have set up ball pythons and other snakes that enjoy higher humidity in bio-active enclosures, but I wonder if corn snakes would do okay long-term in an environment that's consistently damp? That being said, corn snakes seem like extremely adaptable and hardy animals so they may very well be completely fine, but I've always known to keep corn snakes in dryer conditions than I would keep something like a ball python, tree boa, or other more tropical animal. If the enclosure isn't kept too wet and there's plenty of ventilation and temps are always kept in a good range, it might be a perfectly fine home for a corn snake. I'm not trying to discourage you at all, but there's are some of the things I would personally be thinking about if I were considering keeping my corn snake in a bio-active setup.

You can put together a very elaborate and stimulating enclosure with a lot of different hides, branches, interesting substrate, and fake or live (reptile-safe) plants, without necessarily making the whole enclosure bio-active through the addition of live invertebrates. That might be a good place for you to start and you can always add in different substrates and eventually a living clean-up-crew in the future if you decide you want to commit fully to making the enclosure bio-active.

Welcome to the forum! Personally, I think the 40gal is the perfect size for your new house mate! Congrats on adopting and all the best of luck to the bio tank setup.

It's way to confusing for me, but I really like the idea. Post up some pics when you're ready and let us know what you've done.