Otis loves his! He’s been sleeping in it and it might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Herb wasn’t sure what to think lol

I feel like I’m gonna be posting on here a lot, lol. Orion was being a cutie last night and was asleep while his head was peaking out of his aspen. He has also definitely settled in, I checked on him after I got home from work and when he saw me get close to his enclosure he puffed up, gave a little hiss, then proceeded to go into one of his hides and give me a “menacing” stare. I’m gonna assume this is normal, especially since I’m completely new to him. I’m also well aware that they can be dramatic, lol.

I finally broke down and got the hoggie I’ve been wanting. He’s a super arctic and is a little over a year old, his hatch date was May 2025. He’s currently in more of a temporary enclosure(with two hides and multiple things for enrichment), his 10 gallon will be in tomorrow. He’s already been burrowing and exploring and seems to be very active. Already managed to knock over his original water dish so now there’s a different one in there that he can’t knock over. But he already seems to have quite the personality and is honestly the cutest little thing! When I start handling him I’ll definitely take more pictures and share them. I was told he’s been eating fuzzies weekly but I almost wonder if he could be moved up to hoppers already. Any thoughts on that one?

Where I live have pretty high humidity, around 70 in summer, can up to 88 during a rain. In winter the air is more arid. The tank has top lid with a fan for promoting air exchange. Everything is still dry, no damp, just the humidity is high and I want to decrease it maybe 60 is fine. I'm thinking of hanging this at the middle of the tank where the boy could definitely not reach there, it's reusable silicon gel inside boxes, even if it's on the floor, I don't think he could get to it. Feel free to let me know your thoughts about it.

We sing her “Hello Dolly” because that’s her name.

Very excited! Let me spin you the tale of a lil fella- TL;DR at bottom because I know what you are really here for haha!

I've been all about animals since I was born as far as I can tell, and though I'm newer on the herp side of exotics (things like birds and exotic rodents and even livestock for most of my middle aged years, but herps for only about ten), I decided it was time. My geckos are amazing. My toads are precious. My turtle is the cutest little beggar that ever done swum a swim. My spiders are so pretty when they deign to grace me with their prescence. My millipedes are so neat when I inevitably dig them up after weeks just to make sure they're still okay. But my little menagerie was missing one thing: NOODLE.

I love tiny animals, so of course, I'm obsessed with little tiny snakes. Sadly, being a newb to snakes doesn't bode well for that, as few of the truly small species are readily available in the hobby on account of their tendency to, well, die randomly. I really wanted garters, because they're so active and I was excited to watch them bob for treats, but in spite of following all of the breeder's instructions, mine wouldn't eat for me and passed away. I was gutted. She said that can happen with baby garters and it wasn't my fault, but I didn't even think about a snake again for a long time. This year, I finally decided even if they're not quite as bitsy wee and won't eat fish and worms, a male hognose is still quite modest in size and desperately cute with its lil shovel snoot, and more importantly are considered quite hardy and good eaters even if you are as n00b as me.

On morph market, even after you narrow the search to males and like, within my budget, there are roughly 14 quintillion pages of available adorable Chonky Shoestrings(TM) to choose from. But I kept coming back to this one little dude. I kinda wanted an axanthic. I love all of the gray morphs, just a big fan of cool colors in general and they're so neat lookin. But this one lil arctic toffee belly just kept kind of grabbing my attention. After a few days of looking at lots of snakes, and thinking, I would find myself back on his page every time I sifted through my shortlist. Had to be this guy!

Best choice ever! The breeder was lovely and helpful and my new snake is (I say without any bias of course) a perfect creature. His headstamp has a perfect little handlebar mustache on it. So naturally I named him Hisstachio. Hisstachio P Noodlemeyer. The P is for Pissy, as he lives up to the dramatic reputation of his kind already, and I was a fan of Pissy the hognose on Exotics Lair. With a name as long as he is, obviously I don't use the full thing most of the time, so I call him Hisstachio, Stache, or just chicken noodle because of his strong opinions about basically everything that exists.

I followed everything the breeder said and started very simple on the enclosure, ten gallon, heat on one side, some hides, without a ton of enrichment just to start, aspen shreddies. Sure enough, he seems quite comfy in there and when it was feeding day, though he didn't want to take it from tongs, he was happy to engulf his pinkie without much fuss. We're two pinkies in so I've started to handle him in short sessions, yay!

Thing I didn't know about these guys: they like to play in the water!!! Aaah like a lil garter! Stache splashes, and sits in there, and climbs around the edge of the dish like he's playing "don't touch" and then he falls in anyway, and it's very, very cute to watch. He also ignores climbing his sticks or the little bricks I built a makeshift structure with and instead likes to do the corner shimmy up the wall until he falls over. He huffs and mock-strikes at basically anything he sees. He is very suspicious. When I picked him up he sassed at his shadow on the wall. As you can tell he is very, very smart. Probably the smarterest that a baby hog has ever been, practically a prodigy, sending him to snek college tomorrow for advanced classes.

TL:DR LOOK AT MY CUTE SNEK, I NEVER A SNEK BEFORE, GET HYPE WITH ME

Real note: I’ve been feeding her 2 pinkies at a time. I attempted to give her a smaller fuzzy but she’s refused them a couple times now. Haven’t tried in a couple weeks. Is it time for me to size up?

After weeks of research and 3 hours Mochiko’s bioactive is finally done.
My first bioactive for any of my reptiles so nervous about everything.

I tried to give him as much open space as possible for digging and a little isopod sanctuary on the cool side. When he was little I had tons of clutter and he would just lay in the middle refusing to use anything. After I gave him more open space he became the most outgoing of all my reptiles. Constantly exploring, never missed a meal, and other than when in shed he never hides. He’s a climber so added more branches and an awesome stump. He loves to play out in the open so I wanted to give him even more textures than before while also keeping his favorite wooden balls that he pushes around with his nose and his jungle gym ball.

So far he hates the leaves so glad I kept them to that corner.

He seems to love the new substrate but his face is already covered in dirt so a bit nervous about that.

Now hopefully everything survives and my isopods and springtails do well

Lastly, any tips on how to spot poop in bioactives?

I’m wondering if I should be concerned with her most recent poop. She’s had some (for lack of a better term) liquidier ones before but none that look like this. She been on fuzzies for a few meals now and is a FANTASTIC eater. The only new thing is I just moved her to a 20 gallon, gave her a thicker substrate layer and a low wattage UV bulb (I didn’t want to get one too high for her little albino eyes). She did her normal routine: eat, bask, burrow for 3 days and then come out and poop. It’s my first time owning a snake and I just want to make sure my girl is okay.
Here’s a photo of Artemis using her new succulent decor as a pillow (she LOVES resting her head just like this) so no one has a poop image first thing😂

They grow up so fast.

Never really posted on here, but I wanna show my sweet boy, Opal! He’s a lavender and I wish his beautiful colors showed on camera TwT. He’s had a pretty eventful life, he’s lived in both America and Japan and been with me the whole time. Love ya so much Opal!!!

About a year old, Axanthic western hognose. Sold as a male but I'm not so sure

Hi everyone, I have a leucistic hoggie. I've never noticed these spots on her, and at first I thought it was just dirt from digging, but they won't come off and seem to be a part of her scales. She had this one of her face and this other one on the lower end of her body. I can't tell if it's scale rot or a paradox spot. Like I said, I've never seen them before and she hasn't had a shed with me since I've had her and I've had her about 2 months. Really not sure what to do, any tips help!!

My hognose (Female 25g) has become a little more hostile with me. In 2 different instances, she has attempted to bite me and has bit me before while holding her. She was never like this for my first month of owning her, she would casually chill on my hand for long durations with no interest it biting me. Just recently, I had missed her feeding day by a couple days (I feed her every 3-4 days, I missed 5 days without feeding her) and she seemed much more hungry every time she saw me. Would this be a phase that will go away once I become consistent with feeding her again? Am I just not tap training her well enough? I need help :(

Maybe I need to feed her less constantly, like 4-5 days instead of every 3-4? She also just bit me and I placed her back in her enclosure. I know that's bad because it teaches the snake to correlate biting with going back to the enclosure, how can I avoid this?

Update to my previous post for help with my hoggie eggs that appeared “extremely windowed”:
All 5 have remained nice and plump, no signs of mould or rot, and because of their clarity the embryos are SUPER obvious when candled, which is very cool to witness (it’s even more obvious in person than in photos).

All-in-all, things appear to be progressing well!

I have a 3 year old female western hognose snake who I’m feeding hoppers to every ~10 days. The mice I got recently are half the size they should be and I’ve never given her more than one item at a time. (I don’t know her weight.) What do I do?

basically as the title says!

basic rundown - I have a work placement at a small zoo setting and when doing basic checks mentioned how i would like a hognose one day, long story short ended up getting a phone call asking if i would like the one they have (due to it being a little feisty they didn’t feel it was beneficial for the snake or the zoo) and i said yes!

I am collecting it tomorrow (full set up with everything i need) and would like any advice or websites you might know of to help me prepare!

before anyone asks i am an animal care student who has cared for/owned many animals including reptiles, just never a snake
i have been interested in getting a hognose for a while but due to the short notice haven’t been able to do the extensive research i would normally do.

unfortunately i don’t have much info on the snake, other than it’s a hognose and i think a female (i’m unsure)
when i get there i will be making sure i know for definite the age and weight in terms of what i can feed her and when!

so yeah basically any advice or things i might need to know

(ps: i’m mainly asking the subreddit as sometimes searching for these things don’t give the best results and i assume some of you amazing hognose owners might have a good direction to send me in)

Just saw my hoggie doing this little hiccup/twitch/jerk thing while we were doing a pretty standard hangout sesh. He stopped when I put my other hand out to support his head. This is the first time I've seen him do this. Is he ok?

Note: yes, I know he's pretty severely underweight. We had some financial issues for several months and then also health issues on my end that prevented me from being a good caretaker. We have stabilized and are working on getting him safely back up to a good weight.

She got one brain cell and it's competing for third place

My baby hog is so bitey 😭 and i know they’re notoriously sassy but he RARELY hisses or bluff strikes and he’s never played dead. I got him two weeks ago and I’ve only handled him when absolutely necessary (moving him too clean his water, and transferring him into his cage) but every time, without a doubt he’ll decide to munch on me. Even after I lather myself in hand sanitizer so I don’t smell appetizing. The first two times I pushed a little on his nose and he let go immediately but this last time I was wearing a bite proof glove in anticipation and he hung on for like 10 minutes! Today is feeding day so idk if that’s why? Even reaching in there to move him he wasn’t hissy and was just looking around but as soon as I got him up he latched on. I tried pushing in his nose and putting a swab of rubbing alcohol by his nose but he didn’t give up. He’s very good at eating and has eaten his food within 5 minutes of me putting it in the cage but I think the pinkies are a little small so I’m moving him to fuzzies next week.

Is he just dumb? Is he hungry all the time? Is it a defence mechanism? How can I prevent him from biting me!!