A few more newbie questions.

[C2tcardin]

First off thanks so much for everyone's help and tolerance thus far with all my questions.

In the last week I have bought a normal for my 8yo son then went crazy at Repticon Sunday in Raleigh and picked up a 75 gallon tank, and a Spider het ghost for me. : ) I divided the tank with a piece of plexiglass and a tube of silicone, I figure this way if one of them gets really big I can remove the divider and put the smaller one in a 40 gallon tank. Right now my hot spot is running around 87 to 88 degrees with the cool spot 75 (room temp), I'm using VE 100's for the UTH regulation and it is set at 93 degrees, I'm guessing the temp difference is because of the aspen bedding and the glass tank bottom but I figured this was normal. Humidity has stayed between 60 and 80%, I live in NC so humidity in the summer is likely not an issue. I'll get some tank pictures up once I get some lights installed, my living room is a little dark and using my iPad for pictures in low light looks really grainy.

As for the BP's the spider is a male approx 1 year old, besides handling him to put him in the tank I've only had him out once to weigh him (185g), he's been under the hot side hide since I put him in Sunday night. I've read here that most won't handle a new ball for a week or two and typically won't feed for at least week. My only concern is that the guy I bought him from said he was a good eater but that he was intentionally not fed as often as he would like to have eaten which was common for breeders as a cost saving measure. Is this a common practice or should I be concerned? My thought is perhaps I shouldn't wait a week before feeding him as he may be ready to eat now. He did poop Monday night so that may indicate he ate recently? The other question I have is what size mouse do you think a 185g snake should eat? I've seen some suggestions of 15 to 20% of the snakes body weight is this what everyone uses as a guide?

My sons normal seems to be settling in nicely and did take a f/t hopper mouse on Monday night, I saw him last night outside of his hide so he seems pretty active. I weighed him the other night, 101g, so my suspicion is that the hopper may be too small now and perhaps he's ready for the next size up. He had no trouble getting it down and I was surprised how fast he swallowed it.

That's it for now, I'll get pictures hopefully by the weekend and thank you for any answers provided.
Cheers, Jeff


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[SlitherinSisters]

I don't know about intentionally not feeding youngsters as a good practice, but I could see it being something people do... I do feed some of my breeder males less often sometimes. Or I feed them a small meal once a week just to keep them working for me.

As for what size, the percent isn't always a great measurement. Really you can get away with eyeballing it. You want to feed a prey item that is just slightly thicker than the thickest part of your snake. If you aren't comfortable with that, pick something the same thickness as your snake. You want to see a bit of a bump in the snake, if you don't see a bump, feed a little larger next time. Large females may not have a noticeable lump, keep that in mind.

[C2tcardin]

Thanks SlitherinSisters, I had the feeling he meant he was feeding it smaller mice than it would normally be eating, I'm thinking I may try to feed him tonight to see if he's hungry. I picked up some different size frozen mice the other day so I'm going to start with the smaller tonight then move up a size if I don't see a bulge per your suggestion.

Jeff

[C2tcardin]

Well tonight I decided to try feeding the Spider a medium f/t mouse and he took it. First time he got it on the back and couldn't figure out how to get it down. So I used the long tweezers to pick it up, dunk it in hot water and after drying it off I presented it again and this time he got it by the head. Success! Now hopefully he keeps it down. I was able to grab a few photos while he was in the feeding tank.






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[SlitherinSisters]

He's really neat. I had a spider who barely understood how to get a mouse/rat down his throat. They are a special morph, that's for sure.