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Advice for newb on tank setup please

S

SaraSomeone

New member
Hi! My name is Sara. I am the new owner of an Okeetee corn snake. Do you think this setup is ok for him? He seems happy, in as much as snakes can be happy. He spends most of his day curled up in one place, but he comes out and explores for an hour or two late at night, and maybe other times when I'm not watching.

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The white tub under the heat lamp is full of wood chips. He likes to burrow in them. The stick is attached to the back of the tank. He rarely climbs on it. It's hard to see, but on the dark side is a concrete hide that was his old favorite before I gave him the burrowing tub. He just barely fits in it. Above the concrete hide, the orange tub has about 3" of water in it. There's green astroturf type carpet on the bottom. I jacked up the contrast in this one, so you can see the dark side.

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I think the temp gradient is probably fine, because he occasionally alternates between the burrowing tub (which is directly under the heat lamp, and about 85 on the top, presumably a little cooler under the wood chips), and the cool concrete hide in the dark. The ambient temp in the house is about 75 in the da and 70 at night. At first, I think the tank was too hot, because he was chilling in his bathtub, but I move the heat lamp further away.

Does this all seem ok? Any suggestions?
 
Most of us use heat pads under the tank rather than heat lamps. Are you leaving the lamp on all the time or is it on a timer to go off at night? Snakes do better on a 12 hour day/night cycle just like they would in Nature. If it's daylight all the time, it can mess with their Metabolism and internal clock just as when Humans are exposed to light for days at a time.

The ideal set up would be light for half the day and dark for half the day. I keep my lights on a timer, so it happens automatically. I don't have to mess with it. My lights do not put off any heat, they are just room lights for the purpose of lighting. My heat is a pad on a thermostat set to 85 degrees. It stays 85 degrees day and night, year round, on the warm end of the cage. The Cool end of the cage is just room temperature and fluctuates between 70 and 75.

There should be plenty of places to hide with at least one place on the cool side and at least one place on the warm side.

Temperature readings should be taken from inside the hiding spots. Measuring the temperature of the Glass sides or top are meaningless as the snake "Lives" on the bottom.
 
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