Congrats on the choice made! Corns are awesome, which might explain why they're 90% of the snakes I own.
However, you do like honesty...so I'll be quite frank. The general concensus of the members of this forum is to house all corn snakes separately. Now for the reasons we all feel its necessary.
1. Cornsnakes are a solitary species. Most of mine don't like sitting together in a tub for a few minutes on picture day, let alone living together 24/7. It can stress them out to no end, and stress is a big unknown with snakes. They don't have the body language that mammals do when they're unhappy in a situation.
2. Disease and parasite transmission. If you have one snake with worms, you're going to end up with two snakes with worms and anything else. Plus, if one regurges, you're not going to know who it is unless you watch them do it. Vets are expensive, but even more so when you have reptiles in the mix.
3. Potential for early breeding. Cornsnakes shouldn't breed until they're at least 300g. At that weight they have a considerably less chance for becoming gravid too young and before their body is physically ready. Eggbinding (stuck eggs) can be fatal if not caught in time.
4. Stress. Since they don't like being together, one may be more dominant than the other and with the stressful living condiitions, one may not eat like it should. One may be a frequent regurger (vomiting up food).
5. Cannibalization. Its a definite risk, more so in the younger snakes. Most often it seems to occur after feeding when their mouths still smell like mouse, and someone is still hungry.
So those are the Top 5 Reasons most of us keep our snakes separately.
Since you only have one tank, I see a couple of options. Buy another tank, take the tank you have to a glass shop and have them divide it in half, or just get one snake for now.
And if you still insist on putting two together, at least get the same sex. There's nothing that infuriates me more than people putting two snakes together to knowingly breed, and then come here hassling us about every aspect of 'what to do'. I'm not saying that you're going to do it necessarily as you seem wholly responsible thus far, especially about researching and having the supplies BEFORE getting the animal, that speaks volumes. There just seems to be a lot of irresponsible people out there who don't take responsibility for
their own actions, and instead of two snakes, they now have 17.
