bleaching dirty exo-terra sand?

[snakesteve]

hi i bought a new ball python which came with an enclosure with about two inches of sand. its absolutely hangin' with urea and there might even be dung in there which is not good. could i siv and bleach, then dry the sand for re-use?
thanks guys

Steve

[Sponger05]

I don't know how good of a substrate sand is for pythons....

[Adrya]

Personally I would use a different substrate such as aspen or cypress mulch instead of the sand for your ball python. It's so much easier to spotclean, and generally replace entirely with new mulch.

I only use sand with my little sand boa because he burrows in the stuff, and yes sand can be sifted through to get urates and dried feces, but every couple of months, it's extremely difficult to wash and clean without making a huge mess, and generally takes a really long time to dry.

So in my opinion, it's just not worth using sand for your ball python.

Also if you do wash the sand with bleach, it'll be really difficult to thoroughly rinse the sand of all the bleach.

[Vin]

I'd go for cypress mulch aswell, or news paper if your low on cash.

[unluckyseventeen]

Sand is the complete opposite of what you want for holding humidity. My guess is, with sand, you might be lucky to hold 30% humidity, when in reality you need 50% at the minimum. You should look into some cypress or aspen mulch, or even newspaper would be a 100 times better than sand.

Just dump it out and put something better in there.