working solo today but that doesn't mean i ever get to take a break from trying to
continue to push education and content so we are in the ever continuous quest of continuously
upgrading changing and uh updating environments so today we are updating our mexican black king
snake male o'malley from a exoterra i think it's called xl or large low it's the 36 by 12 by 18
and this is the xl tall or medium i don't know the i don't know the different sizes
basically it's 36 by 18 by 18 so it's gonna provide a little bit more area so here is o'malley
that we've already uh snagged from the other uh from the other enclosure and we're just gonna get
right into this normally i already have it pretty much filled out figured out and then i just kind
of talk a little bit as i do that but today i'm going to just go not necessarily from the ground
up but i mean technically from the ground up because we're going to start with substrate
and we'll just fill it out and we'll just kind of have a little chat about it as we go along so
getting started so here's the 36 enclosure which is i think a decent size for an adult collubrid
mexican black king stinks don't get huge they typically are a little bit smaller than the cali
kings and then a lot of people will keep those in like a 36 i'm on the fence i think there's nothing
wrong with that so like but i think maybe like 120 gallon or like a four foot might be okay for a
cali king snake or for some that gets a little bit larger but whatever that's it that's whatever the
case may be we'll see always room for improvement things like that so when we think about the
mexico about king snakes we're thinking about finding these guys in more arid regions of uh
mexico and places like that so when we do the soil substrate we're going to do a mix
of clay sand of organic top soil of some leaf litter and a little bit of cypress
mulch so the cypress mulch and the topsoil will allow for a little bit of leaf litter
will allow for the ability to hold a little bit of moisture and then the loose play sand makes
it kind of loose which will allow them to bury because if you have many king snakes but mexican
black king snakes in particular if you do give them the ability to burrow they will absolutely
take advantage of it which i learned as through the previous two maxing by king snake builds
uh that whenever i put like a little divider and gave them more sandy substrate and more humidity
more traditional snake bedding substrate uh he would very quickly knock over pull up dig out that
barrier and would end up getting kind of crossed all over anyway so we're just gonna do this whole
little thing then this was the previous enclosure for uh our uh northern pine snake so that was
uh she was uh pretty destructive she liked to rip this off so you know we pulled everything
out washed it changed up the substrate and then we put this back in um so waste not what not it won't
be the end of the world and if o'malley gets back behind there cool he can get away from this light
and then the lighting above it is actually one uh low wattage uvb bulb and then just a little
halogen bulb for a little bit of extra light and just a tiny little bit of heat in the winter i
have a heat pad over on this side so when we start filling this out this is going to be
the warm side this will be the cool side um during the summer uh i mean we did just move down here
so i'm still figuring out the actual temps and everything but it said to the point where most of
the clubrids are almost purely ambient and we're just doing like the good oh it's probably about 10
12 degree night drop without supplemental heat in this building and so during the day it gets up to
like 70 and almost to 82 over on this side it's a little bit cooler on that side um although i added
a humidifier and that's helping in here as well so essentially this will just kind of be their
basking area during the summer then obviously we'll add the supplemental heat for the winter
so let's get started with that then shall we so first things first we have the substrate have the
lighting let's put a little water dish over here i'm going to put this on the cool side over here
carry it down just a little bit and we'll see i may end up moving it around as we build along
haven't really uh i haven't quite decided how i'm going to do this quite yet then we're going to do
a couple different hides so we're going to take this side this will be the cool hide and we'll
stick it back here now as far as like a lot of times i talk about adding moisture and humidity on
the inside of these hides for a species like the mexican black king snakes they don't necessarily
need nearly as much humidity as a lot of other popular reptiles that are more subtropical like
ball pythons and bows and things like that so generally what i will do is i will just
you know reflate this and then maybe dump a little water over here spray out under there
so under the individual hides a little bit wet but i want to actually add sphagnum moss under those
um and then so since this is going to be i think what i'm going to do actually
is i'm going to take this larger hide right here and i'm going to stick that one
kind of like right there and then i'm going to put this on top right there so it'll be something
a little bit on top there well i might change it up for the winter because like this heat pad
this will help absorb that heat through the substrate and you can warm up on that i haven't
quite decided maybe i'll put another rock inside of this hide because it's a pretty large hide
and that's actually probably what i'll do for winter i'll just put another piece of flatter
uh slate or a flat piece of rock under here and put it directly on the glass and have the
substrate kind of around that so that way you can get a little bit of heat under that for the winter
times and then now we're going to start filling out with some other fun stuff so personally i know
that even though these guys are you know fairly fostorial not necessarily the well they're more
terrestrial not fossorial they will vary and burrow and things like that but they do spend
a lot of time hunting in and around the ground and around rock canyons and crevices and shelves
like that but i know they will also climb low levels into small things so we're gonna add some
climbing branches um one of my new favorites is cholla wood well they're not as plentiful in the
areas where mexican black king snakes are found as far as i'm aware i do like to use it because it
kind of adds nice little deserty motif to that so we're going to do this we're going to prop that up
just like so maybe not just like so we'll do we'll do that actually that way i can get to that water
dish a little bit easier and so it'll be nice and propped up just like that um we're gonna take
let's see maybe this kind of twisted branch like here and we're gonna do
this maybe let's see we'll just kind of we'll just play around and goof around a little bit with
some of these things and then so just a little fun fact the cholla wood is uh dry dead cactus
plants uh and so uh this is actually something that uh where i typically like to go herping
uh and now uh i'll be a lot closer to places where this is more plentiful when i go out herping i'll
find the dead plants um and then this is kind of like a field collection branch kind of thing like
it is a lot of other places and then you treat it exactly the same where you bake them you wash them
and bake them at low temperatures for long period times or you can do the the bleach bath where you
submerge them in bleach water for long periods of time and then uh then you add other things to kind
of that to let them uh let that bleach kind of come out so you'll soak it in bleach water and
they'll pull it off rinse it out and then you'll soak it in regular water to allow the bleach to
come out because otherwise that bleach can end up staying in there let's add a couple other little
things here so we'll just put a little rock there um maybe another little rock back here
i don't know should we do another troya wood another big branch i don't know i really like
the choi wood but maybe i'll hold off i don't have a whole lot of really good choir right now
maybe i'll get some more this summer um because a lot of the animals that i'm gonna end up moving
into these cages are uh more of the uh arid type species so there we go maybe like that
yeah that looks pretty good what do you guys think i think that looks not too bad maybe like
maybe like that put another rock right here just to kind of hold that in place
that way you can bask here they don't do a lot of full basking they do a lot of cryptid basking
although these guys i don't know nearly as much about their regular behavior as some of the ones
that are more common here because i actually get the ability to observe them but a lot of snakes
they will do cryptid basking will expose just parts of themselves um and i have noticed that
with quite a few other species that i allowed the ability to do that with uh both for heat and for
uva and uvb light spectrums so this will allow the him to kind of poke out here and even he would do
that a lot he would very rarely be fully exposed when he wasn't looking around for food even his
other enclosure because essentially i just had the same lights on on that other enclosure i'm just
giving him more space to climb and move around um so or now maybe we'll do so this it's just a
little artificial pine thing just for a little bit of a little extra greenery something for
him to interact with move this around here maybe not next to that maybe like this weight that down
like so maybe like that we'll probably pull that down he's he can be quiet he can be a
little destructive at times just a little fake plant maybe like that then we'll take this
and kind of like that we'll see how quickly he destroys this and moves everything around
what do you guys think i think it's looking looks pretty good um like i said he likes to climb
around and do get into a lot of different things what do you think should i do should i do another
another hide i'm not sure if we really need to or not he has this one he can fall up under there
so it's one two hides he can get back there he can get back behind here if he so chose
plenty of places for him to climb he can bask there he can come over here nice large water
dish already got some gunk in there i don't know what do you think i think
it looks pretty good i think that should work let's get some water in there for him
let's get some water
a little water under there
splash it over there
a little splash over there we'll let that kind of sink in
and then we'll pop them in we'll take this off the top here just an extra
little branch that i had just hanging out over here so we'll grab o'malley
now we're gonna shut this
now we're gonna well maybe not we'll leave it open because i don't like that reflection on there
so we'll pull o'malley out come here o'malley come here so here's
o'malley in that natural substrate he's not as glossy as he could be
but this one there is less sand because in the previous one essentially i just i would i got
to the point where i stopped uh maintaining that barrier between the two substrates and he just
kind of buried through and went through all that this because the substrate has a little bit more
moisture content ability and more topsoil i think he'll retain that gloss more because this is just
kind of dust from that dirt so let's just kind of see what he's going to do but i think this will be
a pretty good looking enclosure what does everybody think i think it looks pretty good
there we go moving around he's just going to check things out for a little while and a lot
of times you're not really quite sure how they're going to adjust very quickly because you know the
first day or two is always just clean is just investigating looking around checking stuff out
a lot of this is going to smell like him because you know the choi wood all came from there um the
hides a lot of the rocks the fake plants came from them um and then the substrate is new substrate
uh and then i mean we do our best to wash it sometimes they still end up smelling like
remaining pheromones and things are left on uh from previous reptiles but i tried to wash
this out as well as i could so hopefully you'll spell some familiar stuff some new stuff and just
because it's a change he will just be spending a lot of time checking this out but there you
go um this is our mexican black king snake uh i guess you could say 2022 edition for a setup
uh i don't know i think it looks pretty good uh one of these days uh actually just i'm hoping to
go get a bunch of nice really cool like pieces of flat slate and concrete that i will eventually and
then this will be another rebuild that i do later maybe this year or next year i will start to have
more ability to utilize even more of this space where i can make nice like piles and places for
them to be able i can create crevices where some will stick out in between where you can get up and
crawl in between and have more of those natural behaviors and i can utilize more of this because
this is still while yes there's plenty of places for him to climb and move around there is still a
lot of unutilized space here that i get a lot as a criticism but i mean we're working on that as a
whole and it's a valid criticism for sure that eventually i will have you know maybe a small
rock pile here or more branches and detritus over here and then over here on the warm side where the
ultraviolet where the sun would be i'll create a more of a you know the rock pile maybe still
utilize a small hide or something uh at the base of it but make something to where it'll actually
fill out and he can utilize even more of this area because in all honesty this is unused space
but you know plans for the future this is what we got going right now
uh because i'm going to be uh moving a few of uh some old enclosures and things for other projects
uh maybe even some trades and stuff that uh some people might be a little privy to uh in the near
future in the in the coming months but just upgrading him because he need to go in here too
and so i wanted to make just a quick little video about this you know not everything's perfect not
everybody does the same so that you can see let's see if i can adjust this really quick you can see
him there we go because now i'm done building it you can just kind of as we squeeze down there he's
starting to burrow down he's just he's just nosing around smelling stuff seeing what's going on
but that's the kind of behavior that you would see a lot um that you know a lot of people will keep
calibrates on aspen which allows them to do this but i like the more naturalistic most of the time
and even in the racks a lot of them are uh similar different types of uh substrate uh concoctions
and there's commercial stuff too like uh there's a pre the permian exotics that i met are really cool
uh josh's frogs bio dude um they all do a very good job of making a bunch of really nice
different substrates for ranging in species but just a little idea one thing you can do
um you know with a lot of snakes there's the idea that you know they they like small cramp spaces
but if you give them room and plenty of places to explore they will absolutely utilize it whether
you necessarily see it or not as i have to kick the camera as i have now seen with other animals
and this including snakes as we cruise along um and i'm noticing that behavior too they're active
during all different parts of the day when in captivity uh not necessarily like they would be in
the wild although knowing their individual species that all make sense too so give them the space
they will use it you just have to build it out correctly and so i think this is a good
step up from what he was at gives him more space and in the future as i said before i want to be
able to start making use of more of this space similar to um actually we're gonna look over to
his neighbors the fat tail geckos where i kind of built that out and even then there's a lot of uh
empty space and got that little poop there that i get to clean after this so yeah poop happens
guys i'm just not gonna deny that but yeah his neighbors over here will shut that for him you
can kind of see that a little bit better where i built that out and gave more platforms and places
for them to crawl onto which they do utilize for african fatal geckos but mostly at night
but anyway hopefully you guys enjoyed this video let's see we'll open this back up and
we'll kind of get in on o'malley as we close this up hopefully again you guys did enjoy this video
um i always love making this sort of content i know that the enclosures and things will usually
get me a fair bit of hate as things go along just because people don't like how the necessarily i do
things here and there but i enjoy it because it's just ideas that's all i like to do it's as i said
before there's no one way there's no best way but there are ways that you can do things that are for
the benefit of your animals and so that's what i'm doing with these things right here hopefully
you guys enjoyed this video maybe i gave you idea for things in the future either with stuff that
i'm talking about for plans for the future or in this actual video um questions comments concerns
please put it down in the comments below you can check out all my social media and jz's
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at updating tick tock but we're on there too hope everyone's having a great day stay tuned for more
reptile content in the future hope you're having a great day and we will check you next time