plants - fake and real

[Stefan-A]

Yes, I collect them myself. What I do to clean them, is to heat them up. One of the benefits of living in Finland, is that there's a sauna in every household. I heat them to 80-100 degrees Celsius for a couple of hours. I don't know if it kills every single organism, but not a single arthropod has survived the treatment yet.

I do the same with branches and rocks. Found a couple hundred dead ants after one treatment.

[drache]

Originally Posted by adamanteus

Stefan, do you collect the leaves yourself? Do you do anything to clean them before use?

I was going to ask the same thing
and also - how is cleanup with this substrate?

[drache]

one of my secret desires for the house we're moving to, is a sauna
but just for the leaves one can probably use an oven on a low setting

[Stefan-A]

Absorbs everything, including the odor. And it dries quickly. All you really have to do is scoop up the droppings and some of the surrounding substrate.

The leaves, oddly enough, also seem to help to keep substrate off food items. They're too big and too heavy to stick to the food and they sort of scrape peat off whatever it is that the snake is swallowing.

And the snakes just "love" (for lack of a better word) burrowing.

[Stefan-A]

Originally Posted by drache

one of my secret desires for the house we're moving to, is a sauna
but just for the leaves one can probably use an oven on a low setting

Absolutely. It's just easier to heat larger objects (or volumes) in a sauna.

[adamanteus]

You seem to have it sussed with your choice of substrate, Stefan. Looks really good too.

[Stefan-A]

Not really perfect, though. There's always substrate in the water bowl and peat still gets swallowed.

[adamanteus]

I guess that happens in nature. I doubt that there is one perfect solution.

[Stefan-A]

The soil is much more compacted and held together by vegetation in nature, I doubt that the snakes have to deal with stuff sticking to their food to the same extent as in captivity.

[Sputnik]

You could probably sterilise rocks and branches in the dishwasher is you used it without detergent or salt. Can't see it being quite such a good idea for leaves, but maybe an electric steamer might be useful. Or those microwave sterilisers you get for babies' bottles.