Wow, lots of typos, my bad, should have been *very* reasonable prices and *items*

Corn snakes and ball pythons

Oh and my hognose

i get my cypress of home depot (its a mix of 80% cypress), and my aspen from amazon with free 2 day shipping.

I haven't bought cypress in a while, but home depot used to have 100% cypress.  You can also get 100% eucalyptus mulch, which is insect resistant, and does repell mites.  It's like $4-$6 afor the big bag @ homedepot.  Some 10-12 years ago I had mites, on everything excpet the snakes that were on the eucalyptus mulch.  I have never had any problems with reptiles on it, and I heard one of the reptile companies, zilla, zoo-med, Trex or somebody, was making a bedding with the eucalyptus and fir bark (the stuff in repti-bark) mixed together.  I don't use any of that stuff any more, too much labor involved.  I still use fir bark (called orchid bark @home depot,)  on some things.  Just a thought, while I doubt any of that stuff will ever have snake mites, Ophionyssus natricis, in them, the way they are kept at home depot and similar places, you never know what could be in there.  I learned a trick a while back, if you get a clean unused trash can, (or whatever type of container fits the amount you need to treat), put the mulch/bark in it, cover it and hang a no pest strip or two in there for a week or two.  I stir it up every couple of days.  Let it air out for a few days after that.  Works well, and there are no chemicals on or near the animals.  Just my couple of pennies...

I used to have a link to a place that sold cypress pretty cheap, but then my computer died....but it had good prices. I get 'Forest Floor' from Petco, and got 2 cases of their big bags last time they have a 20% off (or something like that) online. It ended up being cheaper than this other place I found. I'll look around and see if I can find the other place though!

Thanks for the ideas everyone!