big enrichment upgrade for nelly :]
i am SO proud of how this came out, finally i have been able to fill out some vertical space in her tank!! i made a big order from josh's frogs of artificial plants and cork bark and she is loving it so far it seems :) i wasn't planning on doing artificial plants for this enclosure but the real ones weren't doing too hot, and the tank really needed to be filled out. plus, enrichment is more important than aesthetics :) thankfully in this case i think the artificial plants against the cork bark looks really amazing!! nelly's already having lots of fun climbing and exploring her new furnishings :]
enclosure is a 4x2x2 Kages PVC, substrate is biodude terra firma, lots of cork bark, various woods (spider, mopani, manzanita), DHP and RHP heating with a full spectrum LED for lighting.
[ ID:
Photos of my cornsnake's enclosure full of cork bark logs, large fake ferns and hanging plants, driftwood, and more. Two photos show Nelly on my arm. She is an orange cornsnake with red eyes. ]
Fetico Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear
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Hi!! I was wondering if you had any recommendations for corn snake morphs that are grey and yellow? The closest I’ve found is caramel but I’m not very well researched. Thank you so much!!
I'm sorry to tell you that this is a bit of a tough (but not impossible!) order, my friend, and I'll explain why:
Corn snakes have three main pigment types: melanin (black), erythrin (red/orange), and xanthin (yellow). Most of the known color morphs will affect one or more of these pigments but they tend to be interrelated, so masking or removing one will often affect the others to some degree, and xanthin seems to be the first to go in many cases.
Most morphs are going to reduce or eliminate melanin (Amel, Hypo, Lavender, etc.) and/or enhance erythrin (Strawberry, Lava, Sunkissed) so you're going to be hard-pressed to find a morph combo that retains melanin without washing to brown but also eliminates erythrin while maintaining xanthin.
The Anerythristic A morph (aka Anery) removes erythrin and masks xanthin. Grey snake, but no yellow. Some adults will get yellow in the neck area but it won't be full body.
The Caramel morph, which you've already found, enhances xanthin and reduces melanin and erythrin. Brown snake.
There are other morphs and a potential selectively-bred yellow enhancement that you might explore that could accomplish what you're hoping for, but you'll be at the whim of breeders who, quite frankly, aren't likely to be focusing on this particular color combo.
For possible morphs that might fit your aesthetic, you could look for high-yellow Caramels, selectively bred Miami or Okeetee Caramels, Caramel Kastanie, or a morph called Dark Yellow which is a combination of Scaleless, Caramel, and Anery. I've also heard of a yellow-enhancing trait called Yellow Coat but I've never seen it and I don't know if it was a fluke, a selectively-bred trait, or a genuine recessive gene that has just fallen off the radar due to lack of popularity.
I would advise to look at adult photos and disregard baby photos, as baby coloration almost never stays the same. You might find that a muddy brown or grey baby corn snake grows into a gorgeous yellow and dark grey adult.
I wish you the best of luck in your search and if you can't find exactly what you're looking for, perhaps you can work with a breeder to launch a project, or if you have the resources you can start one yourself!
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Printed Wool Challis Wrapper
1860s
Augusta Auctions
Four months.
He's only been alive for four months and his color is already this bananas-cray-cray.
We are losing nearly ten percent of the planet’s insect population every decade due to human influence. If you have taken even an entry level biology course you understand how terrifying that figure is for not just humans but all life on Earth. As EO Wilson put it,
“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos”
Even despite the urgency of this issue, there are few conservation initiatives focused solely on preserving invertebrates. The Xerces Society is one such organization! If you share my concern about insect population decline (and you are able to do so), please consider donating to their current fundraiser to help protect our most vulnerable neighbors. They are still short of their fundraising goal!
Coperni Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear
You reblogged a post about the negative impacts of harvesting mosses and lichens from the wild which made me wonder about my own relationship with (and use of) wild mosses. I enjoy creating terrariums (for my isopod colonies for example) and tend to harvest wild moss to propagate in these. I dry it out in the sun (and make sure to remove any insects) before cooking it to remove bacteria. I then rehydrate it once I've found a place for it. I take moss from areas that are already thick with it and treat collecting it as I would any other wild plant - making sure I take as little as possible so as to have the smallest impact on the ecosystem. Despite this, I don't think I had realised the frailty of this flora and am now worried that I might have had a much more negative impact than I'd originally believed. Do you have any tips/information on how to harvest moss in a way that causes the minimum amount of impact (such as places to harvest from and techniques to employ while harvesting). If the solution is that doing so is just inherently inexcusable, could you give me tips on how to propagate the moss I already have as efficiently as possible, so that I may have enough for bigger projects (like a bioactive vivarium for my snake)? Thank you very much for your time, - A worried moss enjoyer
I’m so glad you’re thinking about this and what actions you can take! It sounds like you’re being thoughtful and intentional about your harvesting practice and not harvesting for commercial use or profit. I recommend identifying the kinds of moss you’re harvesting and doing research on their growth and vulnerability. It’s also not legal to collect moss in many areas, so be mindful of the law and local cultural practices — it’s important to be respectful to the plants and the people who care for them. You also have to consider the environment they grow in — can you replicate it well? What substrates can you provide?
Try not to take from the same place if you can avoid it — give the moss a chance to recover. Monitoring their growth after harvesting can give you an idea of how much you affect them.
Mosses are diverse and their needs and growing speeds are different. My personal recommendation is to harvest a very small amount (and maybe some of the substrate, to make sure you don’t damage the underlying structures) and attempt to grow it at home. If you can’t support it, I would choose a different moss. I would try to find a moss that you can grow so you can harvest a small amount and let it spread naturally over time.
For propagation, my mosses live with my carnivorous plants so they have high humidity and light. Not all mosses want light though, so really check where they grow.
Thanks so much for writing in and being environmentally conscious! I hope you can keep enjoying moss for many years to come.