Loki's New Home

[Roman]

Great job!

It looks really fantastic. From my experience with large colubrids (Spilotes pullatus, Orthriophis taeniurus frisei) your palm-like plants will not last very long – maybe 2 to 4 weeks before they are pushed flat. That was about the time my tiger ratsnakes needed to destroy my plant…

If you are not determined to use only plants from the same origin as your indigo I would suggest to use something like pothos (Epipremnum aureum), Scindapsus pictus, Philodendron scandens or creeping fig (Ficus pumila). All of them are pretty robust, they survive even losing a whole tendril and grow fast enough to replace any leaves they might lose. All of them won’t win you the award for the most natural enclosure possible but they will keep your enclosure green.

If you add something rough at the background the plants will even grow upwards and you will have a green background within a year. Do you know “Xaxim” (I don’t know if this is the same in English, it’s some fabric from tropical tree ferns) ? Here in Germany you can get it as tiles which can be glued at the background of your enclosure. If you keep it moist (like in really wet) some ferns or moss might actually grow from it all by itself, but otherwise it is great for the other plants to get hold on.

I would also add some larger branches for climbing. I don’t know about indigos if they climb very much, but as your enclosure is high enough add some branches for your snake so it can use the third dimension.

Roman

[eminart]

Originally Posted by Roman

Great job!

It looks really fantastic. From my experience with large colubrids (Spilotes pullatus, Orthriophis taeniurus frisei) your palm-like plants will not last very long – maybe 2 to 4 weeks before they are pushed flat. That was about the time my tiger ratsnakes needed to destroy my plant…

If you are not determined to use only plants from the same origin as your indigo I would suggest to use something like pothos (Epipremnum aureum), Scindapsus pictus, Philodendron scandens or creeping fig (Ficus pumila). All of them are pretty robust, they survive even losing a whole tendril and grow fast enough to replace any leaves they might lose. All of them won’t win you the award for the most natural enclosure possible but they will keep your enclosure green.

If you add something rough at the background the plants will even grow upwards and you will have a green background within a year. Do you know “Xaxim” (I don’t know if this is the same in English, it’s some fabric from tropical tree ferns) ? Here in Germany you can get it as tiles which can be glued at the background of your enclosure. If you keep it moist (like in really wet) some ferns or moss might actually grow from it all by itself, but otherwise it is great for the other plants to get hold on.

I would also add some larger branches for climbing. I don’t know about indigos if they climb very much, but as your enclosure is high enough add some branches for your snake so it can use the third dimension.

Roman

Thanks! I did consider some of those plants, and I may eventually get some. I've used pothos a lot with other reptile species. I'm just going to see what survives and go from there. Indigos don't climb much, but I did consider a climbing branch. I might still add one, but I really don't want to attach anything permanently to the walls so that I can avoid drilling through my epoxy coating. But, we'll see. I know it's going to evolve as I learn more about what will work with this snake. Thanks for the recommendations.