Nelsons Milk Snake Setup

Building your Milk Snake Setup

It's very easy to construct this milk snake setup. The vivarium and cabinet come with instructions and should take around 20 minutes per unit to construct. They mostly use locking screws so don't worry if you make a mistake, they can be taken apart and re-built. Once the vivarium is constructed you will need to seal the joints inside with aquarium sealant. This will extend the life of your vivarium and keep the joints water resistant. Make sure the panels are all as clean and as dry as possible before applying. Once applied you will want to leave the enclosure for at least 6 hours so the silicone can set and the fumes can disperse.

For the following sections the cables for each piece of equipment will be fed through the vents at the top or bottom of your enclosure's back wall. The Vivexotic range now include removable vents large enough to fit the entire plug through so you should not need to re-wire any plugs.

Creating the Basking Area

This enclosure is designed to get to 90 Fahrenheit on the hot end but still leave the other side cool. To achieve this you should choose one end of the enclosure to be your hot end and one end to be the cool end. All of your heating equipment needs to be placed in the hot end.

We provide our daytime basking temperatures using a single basking spot lamp in controlled by a thermostat. It should be fixed to the centre or rear of the ceiling close to the warm side and surrounded by a guard. Ideally we want 1/3 of the enlcoure to be hot so we would usually space the bulb out 3 inches from the side wall.

Once fixed in place the lamp can be plugged into your dimming thermostat outside the enclosure. The dial on the thermostat is set to 90f and its sensor should be placed inside the enclosure around 1/3 of the way from the hot side and a few inches above the floor. We would normally pin the sensor to the back wall facing towards the warm end to keep everythng tidy.

Lighting the Enclosure

In this enclosure we include a small self contained UVB unit. This will provide additional lighting as well as beneficial UVB for the snake. It should be mounted on the hot end of the enclosure and can be fixed front to back or horizontally.

Night time Heating

In this kit the night time heating is provided by a heat mat. These can be harmful so we need to make sure they are always guarded and controlled by the appropriate thermostat. The heat mat rests on the floor on the same side as your basking bulb. It is then buried in your your substrate.

Once in place the lamp can be plugged into your on.off thermostat outside the enclosure. The dial on the thermostat is set to 75f and its sensor should be placed on the bedding above the heat may.

Controlling Temperatures

This set up has both of its heating equipment controlled by a thermostat so it should maintain the correct temperatures automatically. If you notice that the basking lamp is always dimmed you could swap it out for a lower wattage lamp. Similarly if the lamp is always on and struggles to get up to temperature you could swap it for a higher wattage.

Running the Enclosure

This setup is designed to provide an intense basking area and low level UVB during the day then a warm floor during the night. The basking lamp and UVB kit should be on for 10-12 hours per day and off at night. When the basking lamp has been turned off the vivarium will begin to cool down, when it gets below the set temperature your thermostat will turn on the heatmat and keep one side warm for you.

If you have any concerns or need any further advise please let us know.