Hi guys. I'm from Argentina. I'm new to these forums and a couple of months new to ball pythons, although i'm not new to reptiles.
Last september I bought an adult Mojave male and an adult nominal female and this year I want to breed them.
I haven't stopped reading since new year and I have a couple of questions about breeding and husbandry.
I've already made a temperature cycle plan for this year. I bought a thermostat along with flexwatt and builded the cages where my animals are.
Right now it's summer here. The temp in the basking spot it's around 33-30C (from the very center to the surroundings) and the cold spot is 27-28C. In Fº thats 91-86 in the hotspot and 82 in the cold spot.
The snakes are being kept in the general reptile/plant room.
My idea is to lower the flexwatt temp to 26C (80F) in the hotspot during the night. But here's the issue: I have a Gas heater in my reptile room which I turn on during winter to keep my animals warm all the time. Because of this, I'm going to have to move my Ball pythons outside my reptile room. That will mean that I'll be able to control my hotspot temperature but I won't be able to control the cold spot temperature so much.
So my question is: How do you guys do to control the temperature in your cold spot during winter time when temperatures can get cold? (Here we rarely see temps below 10c (50f) OUTSIDE the house, meaning inside the house we are around 60F, but that's too cold for a ball python) Will the flexwatt be enough to heat up the rest of the terrarium? If not, what else can I use to heat it up and how do I control it having in mind I want to breed?
Thank you in advance and forgive me, i'm a newbie.