New ball python owner

[Brandon101]

Hi everyone, let me start of by letting everyone know that I live in south Africa. I recently bought a 2 month old baby ball python. I'm housing her in a plastic container until she is old enough to go into her proper cage. Anyway my question is got to do with her under tank heater. At the moment our temperatures are reaching about 30° celcius during the day. I was wondering if I should keep the uth on a timer (1 hour on and 2 hours off) or leave it off the whole day and just switch it back on at night time? Any help will be greatly appreciated

[LittleTreeGuy]

The UTH should be on a thermostat. This will allow it to always be controlled at a safe temperature. Timers are just not reliable for this as they can heat up too quickly and get much hotter than your snake can handle.

Thermostat. It's pretty much a must have.

[Brandon101]

Thank you for your quick reply. The only reason I'm using a timer is because I can't get a thermostat, so i thought the timer would be the next best option. The timer was also recommended by the owner of the pet store.

[LittleTreeGuy]

I have done a lot of research on heating for these snakes, and have read a lot of things, good and bad. I could not in good judgement make that recomendation to you. You would be better off buying a space heater of some kind and just keeping the room the snake is in somewhere around 80 degrees. Even then, the snake should have a warmer spot to help thermoregulate it's body temperature. You can order thermostats online for under $50. They are not the best in the world, but they would definately meet your needs.

If an owner of a pet store recommended that to you, I wouldn't take too much more advice from that person regarding your BP, but that's my opinion.

Why can't you get a thermostat? Price? Availability? Just curious.

[Brandon101]

With regards to your question about the thermostat, availability is the problem. They can be ordered online from Johannesburg, but because the pet store owner said the timer is a good option I never bothered ordering one, but I also did allot of research and most of the posts recommend a thermostat which is why I posted on this forum just to see what everyone thinks

[Brandon101]

There is a temperature gradient in the container, hot side stays about 31,32° Celsius and the other side about 27°

[ItsAllNew2Me!]

that is still not good. You need a way to control the max temp. Are dimmer switches available to you. There are a couple of tutorials that show how a dimmer switch can be used as a temporary thermal controller. Here is one write up on it:

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...r-cheap-skates

Get that regulated A.S.A.P so you don't have and injured snake on your hands.