if you're thinking about getting a hog no snake you're going to need the perfect enclosure for one and today we're going to be setting up on any budget the perfect enclosure for your adult or your baby hognose snake my name's adam this is ekkins you're watching wiccan's wicked reptiles stick around [Music] normally i have my co-host with me but uh hognose snakes are not good at holding on to you and also there's a bucket of rats in the next room and uh my girl has a very healthy appetite so the idea here is to make it quick and to make it pretty cheap but not skimp out and not cut corners so what you're going to need is an enclosure now my opinion what's good for an adult male would be about 20 gallons or bigger an adult female bare minimum 40 gallons or bigger but here's the issue with gallons because if you look at this enclosure here it's only a foot high which is fine for a hog no snake because hognose snakes don't really climb there's a whole care guide right here if you want to watch so all that matters is the floor dimensions and this one here is 24 by 24 so we're talking about four square feet so that's bigger than a 40 gallon breeder anyway so this in my opinion is the perfect setup now what you're going to want to do is get your pvc enclosure your glass enclosure whatever it is and clean it out so that's what i did this one i bought on a kijiji deal kijiji is the canadian version of craigslist if you're unaware and i cleaned it out and what i did is i put some lights into it and i heated it up that's the first thing that we want to talk about because all snakes are ectotherms which means they need to heat themselves up with the outside temperature with the sun whatever it is they can't produce their own body heat like you and i but before you do that i suggest lighting now there's a bunch of different ways if you have something like a 20 gallon breeder and you want to stick a light fixture on the top that's the easiest way to do it because you put the lid on and you just rest the light on top of it if you have a pvc like this and the reason i like them is because they're stackable so it creates a lot of extra room for you it looks beautiful when you walk into a room as well and just they're very light and easy to manage so what i do is i buy these strip lights there's a link in the description below it is an affiliate link so if you buy them i make a couple cents i'm not getting rich but they're the ones i use because they're resistant to water they're resistant to temperature they're not going to fall off so the lights have already put in i'll show you how i did it with a different enclosure basically you drill into the side of the enclosure if it hasn't been drilled in already and you feed your strip lights inside of it take the adhesive back off stick it on the inside i do it all the way around which gives it just the nicest appeal because the light comes from all the way around don't worry about the lumens if you give them enough hides which you will if you follow the setup it doesn't matter how bright the lights are but i always keep mine at the lowest setting and with hognose snakes if you choose because they are a diurnal species although it is not needed and they can live perfectly healthy lives without it you can always give them uvb lights which i do for some but not others it's an experiment that i'm doing this one here just has an ambient daylight to give them a day night cycle and for heating there's a few options you can use a radiant heat panel now this enclosure actually split into two so on the other side depending on what you want do you want me to do a milk snake or a king snake or a corn snake let me know in the comment section below and we'll make another video setting that one up too but the point being i think that for an enclosure like this heating it from the bottom with heat tape or a heat mat or two heat mats is gonna work the best and what i do is i just take some heat tape i cut it to the appropriate length and then i connect that heat tape with these little clips i don't know where to get them anymore that my supplier went out of business sorry i can't direct you to a good place and then i connect that to a thermostat which again linked in the description affiliate link and make a couple cents not getting rich just trying to give you the option to get what i get and then i stick that into the wall always use a thermostat never kind of raw dog your heat that's a weird way of saying it never just plug your heat mat or your heat tape into the wall it could fail it could cause a fire it could cause a dead animal don't cook your animals bad and then the last piece of housekeeping before we actually get to the fun part this is the probe your thermostat is gonna have a probe on it you stick it through that same hole that you stuck everything in your lighting and if you put a heat panel that type of thing i always stick this kind of on the bottom of the enclosure under the heat tape or above the heat tape i guess i should say and i either silicone it there or i suction cup it there and that's how i know what the surface temperature of the actual hotspot is going to be and that that's just how it works so yeah i get asked that question a lot okay let's get to the fun part this is the part where you put your substrate everything is going to be built from the ground up and what you want is a clean base and then put substrate now for hognose snakes you have a few options i like to use aspen that is my preferred type of substrate for hognose snakes you could all also use a coconut core and sand mixture 50 50 make sure it's dry because western hog nose snakes which is what we're talking about like it a little bit drier again check the care guide if you want to learn a little bit more but regardless that's what i like to use because it's easily cleanable it's not going to be moist in there so it's not going to mold and it's going to soak up a little bit of the feces so you can kind of scoop it up like cat litter and also aspen is really really cheap not that cheapness should be your main goal here but we are trying to do this in the most cost effective way possible now how much aspen you actually use or substrate whatever it is that you use you could even use paper towel if you want i don't recommend it because if you've done your research you know that hognose snakes are a digging snake that's why they have a hog nose it's for digging so i give them enough substrate that they can burrow through it so because this doesn't have a very big lip it kind of goes towards the back it piles towards the back after substrate is basically decoration but within decoration there are some important things that i need to mention to you you need to make sure that you've got two heights in my opinion a warm height and a cool hide and it's a good idea especially when shedding to give them a humid height the warm height and the cool height is very easy and because i ran the heat tape front to back which gives them a gradient so the cool end is actually at the front and the warm end is at the back so i'm going to put in the back corner one of the hides which is going to be the warm height because it's on top of the heat tape it's giving them the warmth that makes it a warm hide and then i'll on the opposite corner or the corner right across from it i'll put the cool height so it gives them an option to hide in either type of thermal gradient where they want if they want to hide in a warm place or a cool place they can decide what i always do if you want to add a human hide which i only do during shedding or egg laying which is something that if you want hit subscribe because we're going to be breeding these guys this year you'd want to put that at the warm side because cold and wet is not good for these guys it's bad for the respiratory system warm and wet is better but they're only going to be in there for a short amount of time anyway for the hides there's a bunch of different options you can use you can kind of use these like rounds this is i think it's a reptile actual product which if you know if you watch a channel i don't usually buy stuff like this normally i'll make stuff myself so i'll use kind of like a brick that's been turned over or that's piled up or i'll make something out of styrofoam and coat it in dry lock something like that or you can just go to the reptile store this cost me nine bucks i think back in the day and you can stick this inside of there on the warm side of the cool side and then on the other opposite side the other opposite side and then on the other side or the opposite side you can stick something else for bigger enclosures i've used things like overturned kind of washing dishes or fruit dishes or things like that for this one i had some extra actual reptile products because i do a lot of kijiji deals and when i buy animals or rescue animals they oftentimes come with their enclosures and the stuff in them which a lot of the times the owner bought from a reptile shop or a pet shop so in this case i'm just using three hides and all of them are reptile related products and that human height i was talking about there's a few ways you can use a sandwich container and just put sphagnum moss and coconut core or whatever that holds a lot of humidity inside of there and then cut a hole in the lid that's the easy way it doesn't look as nice or you can get a hide and just stick sphagnum moss inside of it which is what i've done here next you're gonna need a water bowl here again you can use something that's branded for reptiles that looks like a rock or whatever or you can go to the dollar store and buy something that was a dollar 25 which is just this ceramic type i don't even know what it's for you could probably make like creme brulee in this i think that's what it's branded for and the reason i like to use these things over the reptile branded ones or disposable ones first of all the reptile branded ones often are porous or they're intricate in design and they take a lot a little bit longer to clean and i've got a lot of animals so uh there's a reptile room tour right here if you want to meet the crew so it just takes more time if you do one dish uh that's like this which is not porous so it takes like three seconds the other ones say 30 seconds so add 27 second time difference up times 80 animals and you know we're talking about weeks of time through the year and the disposable ones are just bad for the environment and i mean call me a tree hugger if you want i don't care i don't really like to throw things in the garbage if i don't have to and this goes on the cool side because it's a western hognose snake and they like a cooler type temperature or cooler than a lot of other animals and a dryer type temperature if you put it on the warm side it would evaporate more cause more humidity for that reason i keep it on the cool side and although it is big enough for her to get into hog no snakes don't usually soak so not a big concern now at this point it's pretty plain jane in my opinion and you would probably be okay with this but here is my opinion and people criticize me because they say oh you're virtue signaling you always recommend bigger sizes than everybody else for your enclosures and your snake is going to get stretched and they're going to like all this ridiculous mumbo jumbo now there are cases where some snakes do better in racks or smaller enclosures but this is the 10 not the 90 and i'm doing a video for the 90 what you are probably going to get and in that case i think that will help you especially with a larger enclosure that is well lit like this is to give them an option to hide between hides you want to give them cover so they can go from hide to hide without being seen while feeling very secure which is again why i love pvc enclosures because you've got one piece of plexiglas or glass and everything else is covered so i always recommend if you have a 20 gallon closure it's made of glass like a fish tank cover three of the sides because it makes them feel like only a threat can come from one side and even with pvcs it's better because the top is going to be opaque also so threats can only come from one side when you come in the enclosure you're coming from one side and snakes in general a lot of the times they're eaten by birds and those come from above or bigger animals which come from above also this is a tangent that wasn't needed here let's just continue setting this up and my go-to for plant cover things to make it look beautiful and give them cover kind of two birds with one stone get two birds stoned at once you know is a kind of dollar store plastic or silk type thing so you can go to like a michael's like a craft store but the dollar store is usually cheaper so i'll buy things like this which was literally a dollar 25 that you can spread out gives them cover and or things like this which is pretty um this time of year it's tough i'm filming this in january the beginning of january and it was like bare so it's always better to do this kind of in the summer or spring you'll have a better option in the floral section of your craft store or your dollar store just make it so that there are cover areas between the hides so that if they wanted to they could go virtually unseen from hide to hide so in some cases like you see here the height is actually completely covered too so they go in the hide and have an extra layer of protection and in my opinion it just looks a little bit more beautiful this way and i chose uh plants that are supposed to mimic things like ferns and things like that which are part of the native range of where these hognose snakes are from and if you're wondering adam why didn't you do a bioactive why didn't use real plants well these are digging snakes and there are ways to get around it i'm just saying that this is easier and budget friendly in comparison to doing a bioactive setup for hognose snakes which you can definitely do it just takes a lot more work a lot more patience and a lot more money and the very last thing that you're going to need in my opinion and it's very budget-friendly again link below if you want to buy one it's just a hygrometer thermometer the digital ones with the screen on them i think are great especially for enclosures like this which aren't going to encounter a lot of water a lot of spraying ambient humidity now this one here says it's like 66.6 degrees fahrenheit and that's just because i pulled it out of the box this one's brand new um it's the govi brand you can use any brand i'm not sponsored this video is not sponsored by govi it's just the one that i found to last the longest and there's a link in the description if you want to buy one or a two pack or whatever it is and with this i like to stick it just kind of in the middle so i know the ambient temperature if you stick the probe correctly you're going to know what the hot spot is and you want to know the ambient temperature as well you can even use two of these one on the warm side one on the cool side it's really up to you i'd actually recommend using both i just need to go open another box and get a second one and now all that's left is to let your snake explore its brand new enclosure once you've brought it up to temperature and it is actually a lot of fun to watch atkins explore this beautiful enclosure and that's it that is all that is all that there is to it it's really simple so it's taking me 31 minutes in real time to do this by the time i cut this down this video is going to be what 12 or 14 minutes right it's really easy it's really simple it'll literally take you 20 minutes to do this once you get everything home and washed wash everything before you use it of course and what do you think i want to know i want to do more of these do you think i did a good job would you recommend something do you have advice for me the entire idea of this channel is to learn together i'm just a guy with a channel and a camera that's it if you have expertise i would love to learn from you and i hope you learned something from me and if you did please hit the like button hit subscribe if you don't mind we're doing quite a few more of these because we're setting up the brand new reptile room which is this that's why it's echoey because it's not sound treated it's like 400 square feet it's freaking huge there's so many animals in this room and i cannot wait to share them with you and a special thank you to the patreon supporters you guys are freaking amazing you get videos early discounts on the merch extra videos things like that and for as little as a dollar a month you can be part of the patreon club i'd really appreciate it so it eckens and let's go ahead and take a look at ekans exploring her new enclosure because i do videos twice a week that means that i'll see you on thursday [Music] you