New BP owner, few questions.

[Salmonella]

Hi all, new owner of a ball pyhton named salmonella. yes, i named it that.its about 13 or so inches long, nice coloration, just a normal, not fancy like all the morphs....so, ive read the care sheet multiple times, done a bit of research. any who, its been about a week and a half and im now starting to take him out and holding him. ive noticed what seems like dryness in a few very small areas, only a few scales in each, and thers only like 2 or 3 places ive seen it. any ideas?
tank is fairly regulated in temp, doesnt goabove 90 in the day time, nor below 80 at night. 10 galon tank, nice sized hide, maintains atleast 50 % humidty. ive seen him climb through the water bowl twice already, otherwise hes either climbing around looking for an escape, or just sittign under the lamp. another thing, i use the lamp primarily for heat during the day, yet ive heard you shouldnt keep it on constantly since they are nocturnal and thyey can get a little fried by it. i turn it off at night and put on the heating pad.

question number 2. its about time to feed him, i bought a frozen pinky at the local store, let it thaw out for about an hour, and as of right now, hes wondering the cardbord box i designated for feeding and hes passing up the food, actually climbing over it. .... i know thy are finiky eaters, but i was jsut wondering how long should i wat till i put him back in the tank and refreeze the pinky. some have said thier snake only eats it if its be frozen and thawed twice, or if its dark or in a brown papaer bag. or in a box with a box with green sox......
right. anywho, ill give it another 15 20 and place him back in the cage unless i see a reply in time, or ill try later tongiht, since they are nocturnal and such,

last questions for this post, how can you tell tehy are stressed? moving around alot? fast breathing? also how can you tell they are sleeping, ive never seen his eyes closed......

any answers to these questions would help me out.
thanks a bunch and i look forward to communicating about ball pythons as time continues.

[Adam_Wysocki]

82-84 on the cool side, 92-94 on the hot 24 hours a day. There is no need for a night time drop if you own a single animal.

Pinky mice are wayyy too small for a CB ball python. I start my hatchlings on hopper mice or pink rats for their first meal, and the next meal they are getting small mice or fuzzy rats. What was the store you bought the snake from feeding it? Ball pythons sometimes have to be trained to eat frozen rodents because their natural instinct is to eat live.

Lots of posts on the message board about getting your snake to eat frozen thawed. Take a look around and then ask whatever questions you still have.

-adam

[tigerlily]

Do you know what the snake ate before you got it? I would suggest you get a couple feedings of whatever that was in before you switch to whatever it is you want to be feeding them. They are nocturnal so usually it's also easier on them to feed them at night when it's dark. If you're trying to feed mouse pinkies they are too small for your baby.

Make sure you're hot side is consistantly 92 degrees and your cool side is 82....day or night. If your environment is unstable the snake may not be sure it will have enough heat to aid in it's digestion. Temps very important!!

Oh and you won't see his eye's closed since they have no eyelids

[Smulkin]

Also - do you know what he was eating (if) prior to you getting him?

It's been a rare thing in our case to have one transition seamlessly to frozen/thawed - usually a pre-killed works to ease the transition if thats a problem. Then again I could say the same thing about the (potential) difficulties moving from mice to rats - we've usually had to cross-scent to get that to go over. Lot of good posts on the f/t transition - most involving making sure the prey is warm enough - gives a heat signature, and if it is the first few times some manually induced "nautural movement" (zombie mouse-dance type stuff) does well in attracting their attention. Don't hold it by the tail though - your hand will be a much more warm and inviting target and it's understandably easy for them to go for it.

Adam is deaad on about the heat - and definitely avoid 24hr light sources - nto so much from fearing frying them (though lamps do dry out the air) as from stressing them.As nocturnal creatures they are used to having the cover of darkness to move around in - constant light will stress them - both messing with their day/night cycle and not leaving them any nocturne to enjoy.

And of course, welcome aboard.

(EDIT - hastily scrawled sorry - tail-end of work ugh)

[Salmonella]

definately going to have to ask the store what they were feeding it previously.... since each of you basically said the same thing. temps should be ok as is. my room stays a decent temp most of the time, and the lamp and heating pad are on one side of the tank, to keep a gradient, theres still room for air movement, but enough coverage to keep moisture and heat in

any ideas on the little dryness spots tho?

[Dragon Fyre]

Is this container too big for a baby BP?



Dimensions: 6 1/4 x 34 x 16 1/2 in.

DF

[daniel1983]

Is this container too big for a baby BP?
Dimensions: 6 1/4 x 34 x 16 1/2 in.

just put in a few extra hides or some crumbled up newspaper and that will be ok for life most likely. Those are the tubs that I use in my rack.

[kavmon]

my adults are housed in tubs that size. for a baby a shoebox size tub like 4 or 6 qt will do fine. water bowl and small hide and kept a little more moist until they shed out once or twice.


vaughn

[Dragon Fyre]

Sal...sorry to hijack your thread, I thought I posted that in the thread I started the other day. Similar titles and lack of sleep don't work well for me.

DF

[frankykeno]

Welcome to the site Salmonella and congrats on the new bp. We've found with our young bp that pre-killed is working best for us (if you aren't squeamish about dealing with a once weekly mouse demise). We do the zombie mouse dance as well (thanks Smulkin as I've never thought of term for it LOL). We just grab the newly dead mouse by the loose skin a good ways down the back (use an instrument some type not your own fingers) and put the mouse in a natural position head first to the snake and just wiggle a bit and bingo usually gets a fast strike and coil response (so fast we still jump a bit LOL). We found feeding after dark in a quiet room with low light and then leaving the snake alone to ingest it's meal has worked great with our new snake. As well we don't handle it for a good 48 hours after a meal.

Our snake is about 3.5 to 4 months old and about 19 inches long and is eating one young adult mouse every Monday night.

What are you using as a substrate?

~~Joanna~~