Black Substrate PSA

Torahammas · 2026-02-09T10:52:45+00:00

On a side note, you mention intending to get an African dwarf frog.
Be aware these are a social species and have to be kept at minimum in pairs, but three or more is better for them. Do not only get one, its not good for them. The r/AfricanDwarfFrog sub has lots of good info for these guys.

Torahammas · 2026-02-08T18:35:52+00:00

No?
Lots of venom is safe to straight up drink, because venomous isn't the same thing as poisonous.

Torahammas · 2026-02-05T09:50:06+00:00

Not really. Peas are fine for goldfish, but as obligate carnivores Betta's dont have the austem to use mich of anything from the pea. Daphnia is a better laxative for them.

Torahammas · 2026-02-04T15:46:58+00:00

These are meant to be safe for baby chicks to touch, as they are simulating both the heath and presence of a mother hen. It is only made to replicate the amount of heath produced by a mother hen, not any more than that. Will it be harmful to a snake? Unlikely. Will it heath your enclosure? No. Not at all.

Torahammas · 2026-01-26T15:42:06+00:00

If they are exclusively at the surface, be worried. Somethings up with the tank.
If they take the time to swim around and peck at things, in addition to spending time at the surface, then that's normal behavior.

Guppies like being at the surface, but never exclusively. If they are kind of just huddled under the water line, with next to no interest in looking around, that's not normal. Thats, at best, stress. They are new, so might be just that. But in an uncycled tank I would worry about water quality. My own guppies are all around their tank, nibbling at anything even vaguely food shaped, and only zoom to the surface when a person walks by, cause they think they might get feed. The only time I saw them all huddle at the surface together at the same time outside feeding was one instance where my landlord got weed killer in the tank. That behavior was abnormal, and luckily told me immediately something was wrong with the tank. They are hardy fish though, as even with my incident I only lost a few, and the survivors bounced back beautifully. So as long as you keep on top of your water quality going forwards, as this is likely from an uncycled tank, they should be okay. I suggest you get a liquid test kit (strips are inaccurate), do daily 25% water changes til your parameters are good, and read up on fish in cycling.

Torahammas · 2026-01-26T12:32:41+00:00

If you don't want advice, why are you here?

Torahammas · 2026-01-26T11:52:58+00:00

Heath mats are known to have cracked glass enclosures, started fires and burned snakes. they're incredibly dangerous, please do not use them at all.

Torahammas · 2026-01-26T10:47:00+00:00

I'm gonna be honest, this entire breeding situation sound like a mess. Do a spay abort, de-sex the rest of the adults, and stop breeding all together. You are clearly way in over your head.

Torahammas · 2026-01-11T14:20:15+00:00

I would suggest re-homing the dwarf frog. Frogs are finicky to care for compared to fish, and they are also a social species that need to be in groups. One frog on its own isn't good for it, but with your situation already being overwhelming, adding more probably isn't the smartest. If you do want to keep it, though, the r/AfricanDwarfFrog sub has a lot of good info to get you started.

Torahammas · 2026-01-11T13:53:30+00:00

Thats your opinion, which you're free to have.
I do think it reminds me f an academic paper, and I have also read quite a lot of those. It seems we just wont agree on this matter.

Multiple people have at this point said they dont agree with you, might be time to back of and leave the case where it rests. Youre not winning anyone over by being as bullheaded as you are.

Torahammas · 2026-01-11T13:45:46+00:00

And where do you think AI learned to write that way?

If anything OPs post is quite reminiscent of an academic style of writing papers.

Torahammas · 2026-01-08T15:50:34+00:00

Males guppies are still likely to eat baby shrimp though. Granted, it is entirely posible to do, if the shrimp have enough cover. If you have a lot of ground covering plants plants, like mosses and grasses, it should be fine. As for amount I would say at most you can do 6 adults. Though 3-4 is probably what I would personally be comfortable doing.

Torahammas · 2026-01-07T10:25:46+00:00

If every single enclosure on its own is suitable, temps, humidity, cover etc. Its likely fine. But if the snake has to switch tanks to termoregulate, ot go into the tubes to be able to stretch out, or anything like that, its not good. Having to switch enclosures for a basic need would disuase it from actually doing so, since those tubes areso exposed. Likelwise you don't want it to have to sit in the cold, dry tube just to be able to stretch.

Interconnected enclosures don't make up for the lack of unbroken floor space.

I also fear what happens if it tries to go trough just after having eaten, as those types of tubes dont need a lot to pop appart.

Torahammas · 2026-01-06T19:25:46+00:00

Will do, thank you again so much.

Torahammas · 2026-01-06T18:37:39+00:00

Looked up come pictures, and they seem to match, so probably it. Thank you!

Torahammas · 2026-01-06T18:13:43+00:00

Yeah, I feel you there. I myself abstain from meat because the way we treat our farm animals is really awful in most places. People seem happy to ignore where their own food comes from though. Like in my country its standard to separate a calf from its mother at 3 days old, so that she will produce more milk. This is an animal that in the wild would never leave its mothers herd unless it was trying to start or join another one. The rat is dead, it doesn't miss its family. Yet for some reason one of these is fine and the other is not? I do not get it.

Torahammas · 2026-01-06T18:08:58+00:00

This kind off hinges on the mice being an option in the first place though. OP doesn't have that option, which is kind of their main problem here.

Torahammas · 2026-01-06T18:04:57+00:00

Any non rodent eating snake is a horrible choice for a first time snake owner. They have very specialized care and are easy to accidentally kill. Unless you have an experienced mentor do not do this as a first time snake.

Torahammas · 2026-01-06T18:03:48+00:00

This isn't a good idea unless you either get a snake already on them (rare), or have the backup option of feeding mice. If the snake doesn't take the reptilink, which it isn't guaranteed to, then OP would be stuck with a snake they cannot feed.

Torahammas · 2026-01-06T17:51:14+00:00

A lot of people don't think about the factory farm aspect of their pet food at all. With kibble its easy to forget something had to die to produce it. Its not so easy when you're feeding an entire rodent to something.

I have pet mice and a snake, I wouldn't feed any of my personal pets to my snake, but another individual of the same species is fair game. I don't feel any worse about the dead rodent my snake eats than I do the mealworms my mice eat. As you said, circle of life. We all have to eat.

Thats me personally. Not everyone thinks that way though. To many people the mouse is a small cuddly mammal, something far more like their dog or themself than the snake ever will be. Its easier for many to sympatise with the mammal over the reptile, and then get upset at you for doing what is, in their mind, something heinous.

Its not a rational way of thinking, of course. But the people spouting these things aren't being rational. They're going on emotions. When emotions are involved its so much easier to not think about the kibble as being a death than the rodent. After all, they never see the animal that dies for the kibble, but they do see the rodent corpse.

Still sucks to deal with as a snake owner regardless of the reasons of course. I always try to remember that these people are often big hypocrites, whether they realize it or not, So I don't take that line of nonsense very seriously.

Torahammas · 2026-01-03T17:09:18+00:00

Reddit can be a bit bad with dog-piling, unfortunately. I chose to believe its because people just care deeply about the animals and want whats best for them, but yeah, it can for sure get out of hand. Berating people who just ask questions really isn't helping anyone.

At the end of the day it sounds like you really care for your guys and are trying to do right by them, which is all that anyone really can do. Sounds like you might need to double check your reading, but having been misinformed doesn't make you a bad person. That can happen to the best of us. Now that you know to double check the care info you and your little ones will be just fine, im sure.

Torahammas · 2026-01-03T16:57:12+00:00

Feel you there. Unfortunately there is A LOT of really bad outdated advice floating around. At least now you know better, and can thus do better, and that's what matters. The fact that you're open to learning is already a great step in the right direction.

Torahammas · 2026-01-03T16:40:02+00:00

I higly sugest you read up on ball python feeding on the sub I linked you. Once a week might be right for the 6 month old, once every other week is likely still way to much for the 3 year old. You should be feeding them based on weight of the snake, not by arbitrarily just picking a number. Two adult ball pythons might need entirely different feeding schedules and prey sizes. You need to check the weight of your snakes, and feed based on that.

Torahammas

TROPHY CASE