Alright so I acquired a female BP at the Daytona show back in August of 2011. She has grown up nicely and to the best of my knowledge I have no husbandry issues. I have a 40 gallon tank with two identical hides, a water dish, and a UTH on one side. My apartment's temp changes throughout the day/year and so at night the cool side of the tank is no lower than 72F, and the warm side is about 80F. During the day the cool side can be as high as 80F with a warm side up to 92-96F. I use a rheostat to regulate the UTH and an IR temp gun to check temps. Humidity ranges between 40% up to 70%. Normally it is about 50-60% but some of these cold winter nights it got down lower than I would have liked.
She's taken F/T readily since I can remember, but I had some issues moving her from mice to rats. The last few feedings though were no problem. She had eaten fairly regularly up through January 20th of this year. Then she went off feed. She shed February 1st but did not eat again until February 24th, only eating one item. She has not had any food since. She shed again on the 4th of this month. I don't know why the weight came back up. Measurement error, or perhaps a big drink of water?
So most of the threads on this forum and elsewhere say not to worry unless she starts losing weight. She wasn't losing weight until about a couple of weeks ago.
I have offered her F/T rats and mice, and even a few live small rats once a week and every time she turns her nose up at them. Here are the dates and weights.
2-1.............. shed
2-7 ............. 1398g
2-22............. 1372g
2-24............. 29g rat
3-17............. 1396g
4-1 ............. 1393g
4-4 .............. shed
4-13 ............ 1313g
4-19............. 1324g (today)
She's probably about 46" inches long. How low of weight should she get to before I start to worry, and would be the best course of action should she get to that weight? What would you do if it were your animal?
I figured she went into some kind of brumation for the winter, which is not uncommon, but with it being the end of April and her weight coming down, I figure her metabolism has picked up and she should be eating any time now right?
Thanks for your help in advance.
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