Hi! I got a "free" 10 month old female ball python with "everything she needs." She's the first snake I've had in 25 years. I've had her almost 2 weeks now. Since "everything" wasn't anything close to adequate, I've spent the time getting her set up. She's eaten twice with no problem. I know I should have waited, but she wasn't being fed often enough in the first place and was already late for her regular feeding. I've also handled her and she's very sweet and friendly, not at all nippy or defensive.


Since I'd been struggling to get the heat situation under control, I hadn't dealt with the humidity problem yet- so of course she started a terrible shed. Today I went to get a little tub to soak her and also pick up some other stuff at the pet store. I'd been fretting that she was getting too big for her 10 gallon, and ended up meeting someone with a 20 long that wanted to trade for the 10. Since there was more room to work with, I got her some extra stuff like a second hide, a branch, and some fake foliage, and let her soak while I fixed up her new home. She's always had an aspen substrate, I put in cypress. The tank came with a UTH stuck to the bottom. I've never used the self stick before, I always just put it on the surface under the tank so there would be a little air space between it and the bottom of the tank. Anyway- I put her warm side hide over it and buried the probe of the thermometer under the substrate. The temperature of the glass hit 105 quickly. Since the substrate was thin I put a layer of aspen over it in that area, thick enough that she wouldn't accidentally come into contact with the glass. The temp on top of the substrate was 93 degrees.


Pandora loved her soak. I took her out and she happily worked her way through the towel in my hands until she had completed the shed except for a little piece on top of her head. She was pretty head-shy, but would sit still to let me spray it, so after a few attempts I put her in the tank to see if she could get it off herself. She cruised around, checking out her new enclosure and rubbing her head, then burrowed under the substrate on the warm side. I immediately unplugged the UTH and turned on the night light to keep that side warm. She popped out after a few minutes with the edges of the last bit of shed curling up and immediately rubbed it off on the glass. Yay! Figuring it was just shedding weirdness, I plugged the heater back in and watched her for a while. After a bit more exploring she burrowed under again so I unplugged the heater again. She came out after a while and went into the cool side hide. Fortunately I didn't plug back in before I fell asleep, because when I woke up she was almost completely buried in the substrate over the heater. She dragged the thermometer probe in with her and its reading 75.5 degrees (granted, it's 4:00 am) the cool side is 72 degrees. Too cold! It will warm up some during the day, but there's not going to be much difference between temperature zones and she's not getting belly heat. I'm not sure what to do. Any ideas?